CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 1, Group 4

The Effects of Spam-Countermeasures

Fighting against spam is difficult when its countermeasures come at a cost as well. E-mail is not just storage; much resources must be devoted to its processing, and the cost of efforts from virus scans of content to filtering all can be significant. Aggressive countermeasures have a negative impact on productivity, when the number of “false positives” is too great (legitimate emails incorrectly filed as spam). Examine the breadth of countermeasures available to combat spam, providing a brief review of the ethical considerations each raise, and links to online resources that cite specific instances or effects of each.