The Problem
More than half of email messages transmitted on the Internet
today are spam, whilst analysts predict that spam will account
for 70 percent of all emails by April 2004.
Lost Productivity
A Gartner survey in 2002 revealed that staff were already
spending an average of 49 minutes per day (10% of their time)
managing their email. Further, the IT department is increasingly
occupied supporting users with spam issues and dealing with
the fallout from virus infections, rather than working on
productive projects.
Wasted Bandwidth
Downloading unwanted email costs money in telephone and data
transfer charges. The bandwidth consumed means your Internet
connection runs slower, destroying the efficiency of your
entire operation as commerce becomes ever more reliant on
Internet applications. European commission figures put the
cost of spam to European businesses in connection charges
alone at £6.4bn per year.
Pornographic Emails
A significant proportion of unsolicited email messages contain
pornographic content causing distress to the recipient and
creating dangers for younger users. Additionally, a number
of employees have already successfully sued their employers
for failing to provide adequate protection from pornographic
emails.
Fraud & Identify Theft
Emails using social engineering techniques and spoofed web
sites to dupe the reader into disclosing confidential information
such as online banking access details, addresses and credit
card numbers are a growing trend. There is also the infamous
Nigerian 419 scam in which a deposed African dictator offers
a cut of millions of dollars for your help transferring it
from a secret account in Africa to yours. People were stung
for an estimated £8.4 million last year in the UK alone
through advanced fee and other forms of online fraud.
Email Bourne Viruses
The convergence of virus and spam technology means that the
problem will only get worse. Recent virus attacks such as
the Sobig and Klez worms have brought corporate email systems
to a halt, clogged inboxes with useless mails, cost industry
billions in clean up costs and have the potential to inflict
terminal damage on today's online businesses.
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