Looks like there is some news media research going on that will try to determine how much spam is costing business’s. But I think the originator of the study needs to go deeper. As it is multilevel
1. Worldwide Infrastructure Cost
2. ISP Back-haul cost
3. Corporations Network Cost
4. Individuals Time to sort through it.
I personally have had to deal with Items 3 and 4 over the years and I can tell you that we have incurred additional bandwidth cost and have had to employ sophisticated anti-spam technology. What I want is money every time one of these idiots sends me a unsolicited e-mail. The cost should be $1.00 per e-mail. We would see then if the spammers stayed in business. There are some mailings I want and those companies ads would then not get caught up in the filters we have to set to get rid of the absolutely ridiculous amount crap we have to filter.
So if you have hard numbers on what spam is costing you respond to the request for info from [Internet Week]