I learned today that at our university, the Ironport spam protection software actually blocks 97% of incoming mail to UT. Can you fathom that? More than 9 out of 10 mail messages are blocked before you even see them? Apparently the take down last month of the infamous Herbal King spam servers reduced net traffic across the globe by 3% alone. Iron Port itself claims 91% of all email messages on any given day are spam! Unintended consequences of technology, you say? Google to the rescue (not) but they have produced a calculator to let you know how much spam is costing your organization: http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/security/roi_calculator.html, which of course is part of a promotion to tell you how quickly you could recoup the cost of purchasing a package from them…..it’s all a bit sinister, no?
V.M Daniel Regents Professor of Information
spam is a huge problem and hoefully in the near future will be absolete.