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BRITISH BUSINESS LOSING £10 BILLION A YEAR FIGHTING SPAM AND VIRUSES
UK businesses are wasting £6.7bn a year dealing with spam (an average of £463 for every UK worker) and £3.3bn due to PCs being infested by viruses, according to a study from Yahoo! Mail.
Spam and viruses, such as the recent Sasserworm, wreak havoc with office PCs with UK computers needing on average of nine sick days a year - costing UK businesses billions of pounds in lost productivity and unforeseen interruptions to the working day. By comparison, UK workers take on average seven sick days per year.
To highlight the current UK spam epidemic, Yahoo! Mail is staging its second Global Anti-Spam Day helping mail users across the globe to beat the "e-Villains" responsible for spam. Campaigns are taking place globally to help PC users take back control of their inboxes. In the UK a dedicated campaign website (yahoo.co.uk/antispamday) unmasks the five "e-Villains" that British emailers face attack from on a daily basis: Spam, Junk, Virus, Sleaze and Scam and educates users on how they can personally take control against this scourge.
Head of Yahoo! Mail, Europe, James Bilefield affirms: "It would be irresponsible, given the nature of the real world, for anyone to claim that they can entirely eradicate spam. However, our battle plan has a sound three pronged attack; technology, education and legislation.
"We work very closely with industry bodies to hit spammers hard at the source through legal initiatives but the key for users is finding a balance between having the very best technology tools, which we continue to invest heavily and lead the way in, coupled with a basic understanding of how they can personally stop the perpetuation of spam. This combination is easily achieved, given our constantly evolving and leading spam filters, and will arm you against both the dangers and stress of email spam - the invasive scurge of our modern world."
Yahoo! Mail includes the latest, leading spam-busting technology that blocks over 95% of spam messages destined for customers and prevents them reaching their inboxes. Norton Anti-virus technology automatically scans e-mail attachments to help protect consumers from viruses. Yahoo! Mail is continuing to test DomainKeys to combat the problem of phishing and email forgery and is committed to making this solution an industry standard. On a global scale, Yahoo! has set up the anti-spam alliance with MSN, AOL and Earthlink in order to proactively take action against spammers and address the spam problem that threatens the effectiveness of e-mail as an essential means of communication.
Stephen Timms the DTI Communications Minister added: "Nobody - be it government, industry or otherwise - can work alone to eliminate the problem overnight, if we are to have an impact on reducing it, the fight against spam demands international co-operation and collaborative campaigns. Yahoo!'s Global Anti Spam Day is exactly the sort of initiative that is critical in raising awareness amongst web users."
Further statistics:
o 70% of British PC users have fallen victim to computer viruses in the past year
o 54% of users are unaware that computers can get viruses by opening attachments
o 83% of users are unaware that computers can get a virus through downloading files from the web
o 42% consider the chore of dealing with spam more stressful than traffic jams
o 22% consider the spam more stressful than visiting the dentist
Methodology: The study was conducted by Yahoo! Mail among 2,500 UK mail users in June 2004
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