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Re: Explaining spam to policians (was: test message)


From: "Piet Beertema" <Piet.Beertema@localhost
To: "Anders Andersson" andersa@localhost
Cc: anti-spam@localhost
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2001 4:26 PM
Subject: Re: Explaining spam to policians (was: test message)


> >   One day, a staff member was unable to find a scooter because it
[..]
> >    misplacing the scooter, he sent the letter to the internal staff
> >    mailing list, which at Karolinska comprises around 3,000 people.
[..]
> >    estimated that the total loss in productivity was roughly equal
> >    to the cost of purchasing two new scooters.
> The big difference with spam is that, once you're a bit versed
> in dealing with it, it takes about half a second to qualify a
> message as spam or not.

Please tell me the *big* difference?  On good days, I get arround 60 SPAMs
per day.  On bad days I get much much more.  So the example still holds.

The SPAM progression I can see in my mailbox seems to be according to the
law of Moore.  So spending around 5 minutes today (it takes me arround 5
minutes to kill the daily spam, this makes 5 seconds/SPAM) means that I will
spend 24hrs a day(sic!) on SPAM in the year 2013.  Nice, eh?

Note that I earn more than 1 Euro/Minute for my productive work, so SPAM
costs notable money, even today (you can have a nice lunch from it!).

If you don't think one can count money like this, see it this way:  5
minutes each day sums up to 1 day/year (very roughly).  So I could have 1
day more spare time to do what I want per year.  That is TODAY, and keep the
progression in mind.

Note that I today already plan countermeasures on SPAM, as in 2-3 years from
now I will reach the break even point, that is:  Buying a fully automated
commercial mail verification system for $10000 which gets rid of *all* SPAM
is cheaper than continue to click away the SPAM.

This is the prove that SPAM - regardless of the type - costs a lot of money.
And even worse, it steals from your life.

--
Valentin `Tino� Hilbig
URL: http://geht.net/ 1073 560D 7C71 7548 61F1 E5E1 D89E 4DF3 9557 4064

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