Spam Is A Productivity Killer

Las Vegas

Spamunsolicited e-mail, usually for commercial purposesis notonly a nuisance for corporate users, it is a drain on productivity,said a panel of experts at the recent Comdex 2003 Global TechnologyMarketplace held here.

Panel leader Dave Piscitello, president of Core Competence Inc.,a network management consulting firm based in Chester Springs, Pa.,noted that in addition to its unsolicited status, spam is often“advertising for dubious, offensive, potentially illegal productsand services.” Often, he added, the message is a scam involvingsome get-rich-quick scheme or soliciting donations to phonycauses.

According to Michael Osterman, president of Osterman ResearchInc., Black Diamond, Wash., however, a significant problem forbusinesses is that their employees may each spend more than sixdays a year dealing with the spam they receive.

Mr. Osterman said that, for most people, between 50% and 65% ofall e-mail is spam. He noted that his companys research found thatusers identify spam as their number-one problem consistently. “Itsgrown so quickly; its a very serious problem,” he stated.

While some 80% of organizations have some form of anti-spamtechnology in place, even protected employees will spend as much as80 minutes per 1,000 e-mails (about 2.4 work days a year) dealingwith spam, he emphasized. Unprotected employees will spend about200 minutes per 1,000 e-mails (6.1 work days per year).

“Spam is not free speech,” Mr. Piscitello claimed. “It is costlyfor organizations.” It is also costly to the technology community,because “it turns a lot of consumers away from technology,” headded.

He pointed out that spammers and anti-spam technologists areconstantly “playing a game of cat and mouse,” with spammers workinghard to find ways to bypass anti-spam filters.

When it comes to such filters, however, Mr. Osterman said thatin his research, 40% of spam-filter users report that the productsperformance is degrading over time. “Early generation systems arenot as effective as current products,” he noted.

Mr. Osterman said that with spam filters, falsepositiveslegitimate e-mail identified as spamare “more of a problemthan spam itself,” because they could result in missing importante-mails. He added that an “acceptable” level of false positives is3%, while 1% is “good” and the “ideal” is .0002%. Having zero falsepositives is possible, he noted, but that requires “a lot oftuning.”

He also pointed out that anti-spam laws have been passed in 28states, but that they have been difficult to enforce. One reason isthat they dont apply to offshore spammers. Often, he added, suchlaws are “too vague to allow judicial interpretation.”

Mr. Osterman predicted that the percentage of e-mail that isspam will increase, but noted that protected users will notexperience the increase to the same extent. One area of particularconcern will be increased pornography spam, which could result inpotential workplace claims (sexual harassment) and could involve“enterprise liability for internal and external e-mail,” henoted.

“Spam volume and tactics represent a real threat to e-mailuptime and quality of service,” stated Scott Petry, founder ofPostini, an e-mail security company located in Redwood City, Calif.He said his company had processed 148 million e-mail messages forits clients, finding that about 111 million, or 75% of thosemessages, were spam.

“People send out spam for profit, and viruses for sport,” notedPaul Judge, chief technology officer for CipherTrust Inc., asecurity solutions developer based in Alpharetta, Ga. Anti-spamtechnologies primarily offer detection and protection that includeswhite lists (lists of acceptable e-mail senders) and may alsoinclude a challenge/response mechanism. Such a mechanism, heexplained, requires that the sender answer a question, therebyinsuring that the sender is human, rather than a computer runningthrough a list.

Asked for general tips on dealing with spam, the panelrecommended the following:

Do not respond to any spam e-mail. This allows the spammer tovalidate your e-mail address.

Never click a “remove me from your list” link, since this alsoenables the spammer to validate your address.

Use a separate e-mail address for online commercialtransactions.

Editors Note: As this story was going to press, the Senatesigned off on a bill that would outlaw some junk e-mail and createa ”do not spam” registry.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property &Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, December 5, 2003.Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serialpublication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as anindependent work may be held by the author.