On 26 May 2003, Eric Rescorla wrote:
Dean Anderson <dean(_at_)av8(_dot_)com> writes:
There is no cost to spam. It is purely an annoyance factor.
This strikes me as a pretty limited way to measure cost.
To the extent to which people would be willing to pay to not be
spammed, then spam is costing them happiness (an economist would say
utility). That cost is no less real than if it were using up their
disk space. To be concrete about it, consider the amount of money
being spent on spam-suppression. That's a direct cost imposed by spam.
Another direct cost is the emotional unhappiness caused by some of the
filthy SPAM offering views of barnyard frolic, etc. Some of the stuff my
wife receives these days is pretty disgusting. Changing email addresses is
not a practical alternative because of the legitimate random email she
receives. As a society, there is also a cost when some folks avoid use of
email because of stress of having to deal with the trash.
Dave Morris