The annual cost of spam to US businesses is $8.9 billion, and
$2.5 billion to their European counterparts. According to the
report from Ferris Research, the costs of spam include the time
employees spend deleting junk e-mail as well as the cost of adding
bandwidth, buying more powerful servers or tracking legitimate
e-mails that were mistakenly deleted as spam.
Another report, from researchers Harris Interactive, says that internet users find spam more annoying than ever and would be in favour of legislation to ban unsolicited e-mail communications.
The Harris Poll, conducted online between 22nd November and 2nd December 2002, surveyed 2,221 US internet users, aged 18 or over. According to Harris, 80% of the sample said they find spam "very annoying", whilst 74% would favour a legal ban on unsolicited e-mail. However, 12% of the sample said they would be against such legislation, whilst 14% were "uncertain."
Unsolicited e-mails selling pornography appear to annoy the largest number (91%) of US internet users surveyed, with mortgages and loans (79%) and investments (68%) following.
The results of the two surveys are in contrast with the findings of Pew Internet research published in December 2002. The authors of that report claimed that the problem of unsolicited e-mails has been exaggerated, since over 70% of US employees surveyed said they receive very little spam at work. Another 50% said they do not receive spam at all.
