Spam's Costs Escalate

Spam is costing employers $1,934 a year for each worker through loss of productivity, said business advisory firm Nucleus Research, in a report last week. Nucleus considered its estimate conservative because it doesn't account for less-visible costs, such as expenses related to IT personnel, software, hardware, and bandwidth that spam hogs.

Nucleus contends that many IT administrators won't configure spam filters to more-aggressive levels fearing legitimate E-mail may be blocked. Employees at the 82 major companies Nucleus surveyed in May received on average more than twice as much spam a day--29 E-mails--than the 13 E-mails they received last July, when researchers last queried them.