Killing the Corporate Hydra: Spam E-Mail

The Origin and Evolution of Spam

Computer legend has it that spam originated in 1978,
when a Digital Equipment Corporation salesperson typed
several hundred e-mail addresses by hand—addresses of
scientists and researchers using the Arpanet, the
Internet’s predecessor—and sent them an announcement
of a product presentation. A recipient at Stanford
University complained, “Where is the line to be drawn
between this sort of thing (if it is to be allowed at all) and
advertising?”

Today, spam can be classified into three basic groups,
all unwanted and unsolicited:

• Malicious spam: E-mail that includes adult content,
violence, security threats or links to Web sites
containing security threats, or scams such as the
infamous “Nigerian letter” that has bilked
unsuspecting recipients out of large sums of money.

• Advertising spam: E-mail from legitimate
organizations trying to sell products (such as an
online catalog) or services (such as mortgages).

• Friendly spam: E-mail jokes, chain letters, links to
humorous Web sites sent by known friends or
coworkers.
For small businesses and large organizations alike, the
cost of spam is high, ultimately defying quantification.

The high cost of spam can be dissected into three categories:

• Lost productivity: Spam costs dearly in lost
productivity as users are distracted from their work
to view and erase spam, or lured away to spamlinked
sites—Gartner Group estimates the annual
cost of lost productivity to U.S. organizations to be
$1 billion. In Ferris Research’s model, loss of user
productivity is the largest component, comprising
42¢ of every dollar lost as a result of spam. Finally,
according to the Computer Security Institute Survey,
2002 financial losses attributed to inappropriate
e-mail and Internet use soared to $35 billion in 2002,
with an average per company loss of $536,000.

• Inappropriate content: E-mail deemed offensive is
probably a Human Resources violation; the
message could be pornographic, racist, sexist, or
otherwise insulting, offending an individual or a
group. Failure to shield users from inappropriate
content has a huge litigious impact. A precedent
was set in this area in 1996 by Chevron Corporation,
where a $2.2 million lawsuit was filed by female

Page 1 3 4 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Download the entire article in PDF