Effective Anti-Spam Strategies in Companies: An International Study

While spam is considered a crucial problem for both companies and ordinary computer users, little is known about how spam actually affects companies and which anti-spam techniques have been found most useful in practice. To address these issues, we explored the 500 biggest companies in the US (n=44) and Finland (n=101). The results suggest that 81.6% of all email traffic is spam, and that the respondents use 13 minutes of their daily working time to deal with spam. The time used for dealing with spam and the age of the respondents influence attitudes towards spam. There is marginal support that having an e-mail address available on the Internet correlates with the amount of spam one receives. Filters, blacklists, restricting the disclosure of email addresses, presenting modified or invalid email addresses, and white lists were seen as the most effective anti-spam techniques, in order of effectiveness. The respondents saw that Internet Service Providers and legislation should take strong action against spam.