Miles Fidelman wrote:
Since a lot of the arguments about spam hinge on the various costs it imposes on ISPs, it seems like it would be a good thing to get a handle on quantitative data.
While there is a cost to ISPs reguarding spam, the highest cost is still on the recipient. End User's who are outraged by their children getting pornography in email, or having trouble finding their legitimate emails due to the sheer volume of spam that fills their inbox. There are cases where emails are so far out of 822 compliance that the mail clients lock up or crash when attempting to read the message. Time is expended across the board in handling, blocking, verifying, or deleting spam. In this day and age, time is often more valuable than money and the assigned value is dependant on the individual. Unfortunately, end user's cannot just highlight and hit delete on spam. They must look at almost every email to verify that it is spam and not a business or personal email. The misleading subject lines and forgeries are making this even more necessary. -Jack