Implications of Spam

Spam will cost US organizations more than $10 billion this year, according to Ferris Research Inc., a San Francisco consulting group (Krim, 2003). That amount is greater than the gross national product of Albania, Jamaica and Belize combined. (World Resources Institute, 1996) According to Krim, “roughly 40 percent of all e-mail traffic in the United States is spam, up from 8 percent in late 2001 and nearly doubling in the past six months.” Krim’s sources also expect the increase to continue.
Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) performed an analysis of 1,000 unsolicited emails that were submitted to its uce@ftc.gov e-mail address. (McGuire, 2003) “The address,” according to McGuire, “stands for unsolicited commercial e-mail” and serves to provide a forwarding point of spam email to federal authorities. McGuire states that “there is no federal law against sending spam, though the FTC can prosecute bulk e-mailers who send deceptive or false information...