Posted by Virus Bulletin on May 6, 2004
Dips, increases and the cost of dealing with spam
While the term 'spam' celebrated its tenth birthday last month, MessageLabs reported a decline in the volume of spam seen in March 2004. However, a spokesman for the company thought this was unlikely to be a continuing trend, and pointed out that, historically, similar slumps have been followed by even greater surges in spam volumes.
Meanwhile, the managed email security company has reported an almost 800-fold increase in the number of phishing emails in circulation over the last six months.
Spam messages that tip shares have also been on the increase over the past few months according to UK-based anti-spam firm Clearswift. The company noted an increase in such emails between December 2003 and March 2004.
A recent report by analyst firm IDC indicates that, in 2003, spam accounted for 32 per cent of email sent per day in North America. As is the wont of analyst firms, IDC performed an impressive amount of number-crunching, to arrive at the conclusion that a company with 5,000 employees (but no anti-spam solution) would be set back US$4.1 million per year, as a result of each employee having to waste 10 minutes per day dealing with spam.
Posted on 6 May 2004 by Virus Bulletin
