Spam - the facts

What started out as a mere nuisance a few years back, has become a major headache and issue for UK Businesses today.

Unsolicited / junk mail in recent years has increased significantly. Research suggests that the percentage of e-mail reported to be spam is increasing by over 10% month on month. UK Businesses are now faced with the costs of processing the spam, potential legal liabilities, and the sheer frustration felt be employees receiving spam.

It is now estimated that an average employee spends at least 15 minutes per day dealing with junk email mail that is not appropriate to their jobs. Although this can effect overall productivity, the real risks are that the employee is either faced with the possibility of viewing inappropriate and offensive material, inadvertantly executing an attached virus or that they simply delete legitimate wanted email without opening it first.

The graph below shows the proportion of spam email and virus infected email on the Internet in the past 12 months.