I’ve often wondered about how much spam costs me in terms of my life rather than cash. If I spend x minutes a day dealing with spam, how much of my life will be lost to spam over the next 20 years if that trend continues? Money can be always be made, but extra lifespan can’t - that time is lost forever. Don’t forget to throw frustration into it the mix as an added life-sucking bonus - stress shortens your lifespan too :)

Still, time is money - and cash is an important part of any business - so how much does spam cost me personally in terms of dollars? The answer - around $400 per year. That’s purely the value of my time in dealing with what hits my inbox, even though the server I’m hosted on has excellent filtering in place and I’m pretty quick to discern spam from legitimate mail.

I guess it doesn’t sound like a lot of cash, but if you’re running a company with dozens of staff, the numbers can really start to add up, and if you have no/poor filtering - then that figure could be much higher.

To get a rough idea of what spam might be costing your organization each year, try out the Spam Cost Calculatorfrom CommTouch. I think that the default estimate of 5 seconds time spent per spam message as the default multiplier is too high, but it’s still an interesting tool.

To determine how much spam may be affecting your health, consult your doctor ;)

Related:

How spam winds up in your inbox

Email filtering services guide & review.