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Spam Spreading
My day begins about the same way each and every day. At 6:00 a.m., I spar with the snooze button, jabbing at it like a punch-drunk boxer. Twenty minutes later I grovel out of bed, let the dog out in the backyard, brew a pot of coffee, then flip on my computer. I click on the e-mail icon, then wait as a seemingly endless stream of spam hits my inbox. They have the familiar subject lines, and you’ve seen them all:
- Super Viagra is here
- Get out of debt easy
- Nigerian confidential money transfer
- Refinance your mortgage
- Meet singles in your area
- Get flat abs in only minutes
- Lose weight while sleeping
- Hot and sexy secretaries
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Oh, believe me, I’ve been tempted to click on some ... especially the sexy secretaries. But I resist the urge, knowing full well clicking on a link only adds fuel to the spam fire. Soon I grow frustrated as another 30 junk e-mails pour into my inbox. Every red-blooded e-mail user who operates on the Net has one thing in common. We all hate spam.
Bill Gates once wrote “Spain is a drain on business productivity, an increasingly costly waste of time and resources that clogs corporate networks and distracts workers. Among consumers, it spreads scams, pornography and even computer viruses.”
I could think of a few four-letter words to better describe spam, but Gates was right on the money. For a home user, spam is a nuisance. For a corporation or business, it’s an assault against the bottom line.
Surf Control estimates that dealing with spam costs businesses worldwide more than $10 billion. According to Osterman Research, more than 50 percent of all e-mail flying around the net is spam. Well, let’s do the math. An estimated 15 billion e-mail messages are currently sent worldwide each day. So spam accounts for roughly 7.5 billion e-mail messages daily. That’s 2.6 trillion messages per year. This is a staggering number and there is little sign of an end to this unsolicited crud.
As an IT professional, you’ll spend many hours combating spam on your company’s network. Where do you start? In our Product Showcase on page 10, we feature some of the tools IT professionals are using to combat the spam nuisance.
I hope you enjoy the issue.
John Riccio
Publisher
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