We all have to deal with it... and some use real company dollars to fight spam. Companies like Postini and SpamSoap have clients all paying hard earned dollars to prevent it from entering their email environments. We've certainly had decent success using SpamAssassin and filtering rules and such.... But many of our clients continue to ask why do we get it.

In this article,the BBC takes a shot at explaining some of the economics behind it. Out of it are two important factors.

1) Spamming is not as profitable as people would believe. It appears that there is a low rate of return for spam messages. This could be to them being blocked as well as people's combined awareness to spam messages. They've become quite easy to spot, even for the layman.

2) They run off of hijacked machines. In theory, with major vendors working to improve computer security, this number will continue to go down. However, the average layman doesn't know when or if his machine has been hijacked until it's too late. By the time you notice the significant slow down, it's already been hacked. The article go on... "The team used these machines to control a total of 75,869 hijacked machines and routed their own fake spam campaigns through them." That's an amazing number all things considered.

So, what can be done?

1) Continue scrubbing your email. Use whatever tools you can to prevent the user from having to do anything. This has a dramatic return on your companies bottom line. SpamAssassin is a decent open source system. Postini and SpamSoap are thrid party offers that go a decent job as well. Note: Postini is now owned by Google.

2) Load up any and all machines with Virus/Worm protection. If we can prevent the spread of these infections and remove the spammers' ability to send messages, they will decrease.

3) Educate and Communicate to your user base. How do you recognize spam? What should you do with a spam message?