Study Finds Spam Costs Consumers $22 Billion a Year

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on February 4, 2005 - 3:14am.

College Park, Md. -- Unwanted "spam" e-mail costs U.S. consumers $21.58 billion a year in lost productivity, according to a new study by the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business and technology research firm Rockbridge Associates. The data indicates that adult consumers spent an average of three minutes deleting spam each day they checked e-mail in 2004. The study's authors reached their dollar figure by multiplying that by the 169.4 million online adults in the U.S., then figuring the worth of 22.9 million lost hours a week based on the average working wage. "We all know that spam is a nuisance, but this allows us to assign a real value to what it is costing U.S. society," said Roland Rust, director of the Smith School's Center for Excellence in Service. "This should serve as a loud wake up call to government and business," said Charles Colby, the president of Rockbridge Associates. The study also found that four out of five adults receive spam on a daily basis, with 14% actually reading the e-mails. About 4% admitted to purchasing a product or service advertised in spam over the past 12 months.
http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/ntrs