It annoys you at work, it follows you home, and try as you might, this bugbear won't leave you alone.
Spam is an evil that comes with a living a 21st century lifestyle, whether it's through your laptop, Blackberry, and soon, your phone.
And now it makes up three quarters of all the messages sent, which means, if your company's spam filter isn't very good, you're in for a long morning of pressing "delete" repeatedly.
It could be worse, however. American employees faced up to 95% of their inboxes filled with spam just last year.
But what does this mean for the bottom line?
Back in 2005, it was estimated that UK businesses were losing £1.3bn each year in productivity, IT costs and helpdesk charges, about £22 per employee per year.
Research claims there were "just" 25 billion spam messages per day back in June 2005, and that number has quadrupled to over 100 billion daily in 2008. At 1,000,000,000 per day, that's a lot of zeros.
Recruitment agencies meanwhile lose almost £400 each year in lost productivity from each employee because of the time spent sorting out spam.
So what can you do to avoid the growing onslaught of lunchmeat emails? Quite simply, nothing practical. But these suggestions could help...:
1 - Get your staff to change their names permanently
Certain email addresses attract more spam than others. Research by the University of Cambridge that analysed more than 500 million spam email messages found addresses starting with an A, M, R, P or S got more than 40% spam.
Those beginning with a Q or Z got less than half their rivals, at just one-in-five emails. Men called Quentin and women called Zelda can thank their parents for their foresight later.
2 - Get your staff to change emails every month
Sure, it might get a bit confusing every now and then, but there are a million different ways to write "Jonathan.Smith@email.com" and still be understandable to a human (eg, "John.Smith", "J.Smith", "J-to-the-O.Smith", etc). Also, implementing a penalty of flogging for forwarded emails would save time and money.
3 - Quit the internet
Believe it or not, there was once a time when work was done without phones, PDAs or the internet. It shouldn't be too hard to go back to a simpler time.
But what does this mean for the bottom line?
Back in 2005, it was estimated that UK businesses were losing £1.3bn each year in productivity, IT costs and helpdesk charges, about £22 per employee per year.
Research claims there were "just" 25 billion spam messages per day back in June 2005, and that number has quadrupled to over 100 billion daily in 2008. At 1,000,000,000 per day, that's a lot of zeros.
Recruitment agencies meanwhile lose almost £400 each year in lost productivity from each employee because of the time spent sorting out spam.
So what can you do to avoid the growing onslaught of lunchmeat emails? Quite simply, nothing practical. But these suggestions could help...:
1 - Get your staff to change their names permanently
Certain email addresses attract more spam than others. Research by the University of Cambridge that analysed more than 500 million spam email messages found addresses starting with an A, M, R, P or S got more than 40% spam.
Those beginning with a Q or Z got less than half their rivals, at just one-in-five emails. Men called Quentin and women called Zelda can thank their parents for their foresight later.
2 - Get your staff to change emails every month
Sure, it might get a bit confusing every now and then, but there are a million different ways to write "Jonathan.Smith@email.com" and still be understandable to a human (eg, "John.Smith", "J.Smith", "J-to-the-O.Smith", etc). Also, implementing a penalty of flogging for forwarded emails would save time and money.
3 - Quit the internet
Believe it or not, there was once a time when work was done without phones, PDAs or the internet. It shouldn't be too hard to go back to a simpler time.
Comments (1)
I think there's something overlooked here in trying to avoid spam. Don't go to sites which collect data from you, interrogate your system and then flog their products to death through your email account details. Also, ensure when you sign up for say, a cell phone contract, or a new ISP, or even a magazine subscription that you elect to opt out of being bombarded with further marketing material from the providers. Unfortunately in this day of marketing and sales pitches to the nth, it's a case of you're opted by default IN if you don't make a concious tick of the box to opt OUT.
More power to you Personnel Today for helping us reduce the amount of spam we get.
Posted by C Hutzpah | September 6, 2008 3:44 PM
Posted on September 6, 2008 15:44