Spam costs 'Three Full-Time Jobs Out of Every 500'

For every 500 people in a company, the equivalent of three full-time jobs are taken up by clearing spam from inboxes, according to a survey by email security company, BlackSpider Technologies. Seventy-five per cent of IT managers surveyed believe that employees lose at least 5 minutes of work time each day because of spam emails - the equivalent of 41.7 man hours every day across a company of 500 employees. Forty per cent of those surveyed found employees spend more than 10 minutes every day on spam emails, which equates to 83.3 man hours every day for a company of 500 employees.

The survey also revealed that 76 per cent of respondents agree that spam and email- borne viruses are the single biggest security headache facing companies in 2005 as spammers use more sophisticated techniques to target corporate networks.

75 per cent of IT managers dont believe that legislation will have any impact on the amount of spam received by UK businesses.

Commenting on the findings, John Cheney, CEO, BlackSpider Technologies said:

Spam has got to the point now where it is having a real financial impact on companies and is draining resource. Legislation is not going to work but the good news is that employers are starting to realise that putting adequate spam filters in place saves them a significant amount of money and time.

BlackSpider surveyed 350 IT managers for the survey.