Unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE), more commonly known as spam, takes a heavy toll on business each year and has proven to be a serious international problem. In 2008, spam comprised an estimated eighty percent of all e-mails sent worldwide. And according to at least one source, the United States generates more spam than any other country around the world.
Spam often results in decreased employee productivity because of the necessity of sorting through the huge volumes of spam received every day for legitimate business e-mail. Additionally, though spam filters are now common, there is always the risk that a filter will block legitimate e-mail and, for a business, missing time sensitive e-mails can be extremely detrimental to customer relations. According to a study by Nucleus Research, Inc., spam costs U.S. businesses an estimated $71 billion in lost productivity, or approximately $712 per employee, per year. Though these figures are difficult to verify, and different sources often suggest widely different figures, it is clear that businesses pay a high price for the convenience of e-mail communication. Spamming has become so prevalent that there is now a plethora of sites devoted to calculating the cost of spam to individual businesses, as well as those offering protection from it. . .