Deleting junk e-mail cost nearly $22 billion

[question everything]

Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

Deleting junk e-mail cost nearly $22 billion

(snip)

A telephone-based survey of adults who use the Internet found that more than three-quarters receive spam daily. The average spam messages per day is 18.5 and the average time spent per day deleting them is 2.8 minutes.

The loss in productivity is equivalent to $21.6 billion per year at average U.S. wages, according to the National Technology Readiness Survey produced by Rockbridge Associates, Inc., and the Center for Excellence in Service at Maryland's business school.

The study, to be released today, also found that 14 percent of spam recipients actually read messages to see what they say, and 4 percent of the recipients have bought something advertised through spam within the past year.

The random survey of 1,000 U.S. adults was conducted in November and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

http://www.dailybulletin.com/Stories/0,1413,203~21482~2688626,00.html#

[vpigrad]

1. Sigh

> 2.8 minutes.

Wrong wrong wrong. I haven't seen anyone with e-mail that spends that little amount of time in probably six or seven years. It's a much bigger problem.

Spam is a huge problem. As long as the rich have someone else to delete spam for them, we'll never get anything done. I even talked to a local democratic congressman that said "I've never received a spam. It isn't a problem. I wish you people would quit whining." The guy was terribly out of touch. The reason he had never received a spam is that his assitant, who is a friend of mine, prints-out his e-mail and hands it to him each morning. Even our own leaders are out of touch with this issue.

[Old and In the Way]

2. I average 100/day.

I just started testing Mailwasher Pro and it works as advertised. While there is some housekeeping required, it automates the process to a significant degree and keeps my e-mail client (Outlook) almost spam free. I highly recommend it.

[killbotfactory]

3. Junk presidency costs us billions each day

To bad we can't just delete that.

[illflem]

4. Think you have a problem

I read that Bill Gates recieves 3000-5000 spam and death threat emails per day