Junk emails costing Irish businesses over £230m

Junk emails or "spam" are costing Irish businesses over £230 million per annum and could severely curb the Internet's progress, according a survey from Novell UK and Ireland, the networking software company. The survey also found that among the people who had received repeated spam (unwanted and unsolicited electronic mail messages), there was a worrying incidence of those who had received emails of a sinister, or offensive nature, known as "cyber-stalking".

The survey showed that 69 per cent receive up to 5 junk emails a day with a further 14 per cent receiving between 6 and 30 junk emails, a day. In dealing with these unwanted emails, 74 per cent said they wasted up to 15 minutes a day reading, deleting, filing or responding. And 10 per cent wasted an hour doing the same.

Novell has estimated that this equates to over £230 million. As a result, "65 per cent felt that spamming was the cause of stress or aggressive behaviour in the workplace with 65 per cent also believing that spam emails are the cause of many flamemails (an email that is abusive, aggressive or deliberately antisocial)".

The survey argues that as well as costing businesses money, spamming is negating the efficiency savings brought by the internet and email, with a resulting 53 per cent believing that the spam problem has reached levels of seriousness which could lead to people being driven away from using the Internet and email.

Psychologist, Mr Neil Crawford, who analysed the findings, said a spam can be seen as a personal intrusion.

Mr Andrew Sadler-Smith, managing director of Novell UK and Ireland, said the report shows that companies need to urgently wake up to the very real threat that spamming is posing to the Internet's business viability. The majority of spam originated outside the company. Specific product promotions were the most frequent (74 per cent of spam recipients), followed by get rich schemes (66 per cent). Others were chain letters, pornography, financing, stocks and shares, religious movements, property deals, computer viruses and personal harassments.