Spam is costing businesses across Shropshire thousands of
pounds, and using up as much energy as it takes to power thousands
of homes, a county computing company said today.
Fears were raised this week about the rise in companies being
sent spam or malware via social networking sites as the popularity
of the channels continues to rise.
But the figures are still way below that of constant email spam,
which businesses across the region consistently have to deal with
every day.
Chris Pallett, of Bespoke Computing in Telford, said: "Spammers
are only sending out spam because it is successful. It is a
30-year-old global industry recently valued at $130billion and
growing exponentially. Up to 98 per cent of all e-mail messages are
junk, and if one in a million recipients were to respond, that's a
good response.
"The environmental impact of spam e-mail is also a concern. In a
recent study it was said the energy required to send, deliver and
filter out spam globally in a year is equal to powering 2.4 million
homes. Over three quarters of this energy consumption comes from
people deleting spam, searching for legitimate e-email.
"These surprising large numbers only help us understand the
scale of things; spam may only be a small handful of the e-mails
that you receive on a daily basis but think of the longer term
effect. The cost to delete one spam e-mail is four to five seconds
of time. Or, on average, 2.5p. A few seconds or a couple of pence
may sound trivial, but how much spam do you get? A client of ours
receives 5,000 e-mails daily, 96 per cent of which are spam. That
nicely stacks up to nearly 81 days or £44,000 every year.
"The solution of course, is to out-law spam and unsolicited
e-mail - certainly easier said than done. The next best
option is to filter your e-mail before it arrives."
Mr Pallett said as the spam emails continue to flood in-boxes
across the region more and more people are taking action against
it.
And as social networking sites become a target people are being
forced to make changes to their systems.
"In the earlier example the solution that filters those 5,000
messages every day cost only £340, quite a decent return on
investment," added Mr Pallett. "If your business has a problem with
spam, talk to your existing IT provider or call us on 0845 004
3025."