A dramatic surge in spam e-mails is taking a growing toll on Canadian business, causing disruption and a serious financial burden, a new poll reveals.

Canadian business leaders spend an average of one work week each year cleaning spam e-mails from their inboxes and most say unsolicited e-mail harms business, according to the poll conducted for the Financial Post.

The results imply spam has a major impact on workplace productivity, with everyone from rank-and-file staff to executive officers dealing with the problem.

The poll, conducted by COMPAS Inc., found that 74% of those surveyed believe unsolicited commercial e-mail, or spam, "risks doing serious harm" -- both economically and socially -- and believe it should be regulated by the federal government.

The finding is "atypical," said Tamara Gottlieb, a COMPAS co-investigator on the study.

"Typically, when we poll business leaders, they do not want government intervention," she said. "They want government small and at a distance."

The fact that three-quarters of respondents want to see spam regulated shows how serious the problem has become, she said.

By the end of summer, Industry Canada is expected to release a discussion paper on spam which could eventually result in legislation to outlaw it.

Meanwhile, the survey found 93% of respondents spend between one minute and 30 minutes each day purging their inboxes of spam.

The average time of all respondents was more than 12 minutes -- or more than an hour per work week. When that is multiplied by 50 weeks, it translates into more than a 50-hour work week per year devoted solely to spam-cleaning, the poll found.

The results show "there is a need to take seriously the implications of spam and corrupt telemarketing" Ms. Gottlieb said.

Seventy-one per cent of respondents said the government has done too little to curtail corrupt telemarketing and stock-touting boiler room operations.

"There is no inalienable right for telemarketers/spammers to dump their garbage on my telephone, fax or e-mail system," one respondent said. "I pay a service fee for this system in order to conduct legitimate business, not to provide a cheap doorway."

Spam e-mails "should only go to those willing to accept them and there needs to be a simple national system for individuals to opt out of all these types of unwanted solicitations," said another.

In the United States, the government recently unveiled a "Do Not Call" hotline where residents can register to block up to 80% of telemarketers' calls. On the day it was announced, about 108 people a second were calling the hotline or trying to register online, nearly crashing the system.

Telemarketers make about 104 million calls a day to Americans, pitching anything from carpet cleaning to new mortgages and vacation packages.

Spam uses e-mail to deliver a similar sales pitch but it is freqently sleazier.

Microsoft Corp. last month moved to curtail unsolicited e-mail by launching 15 lawsuits in the United States and Britain against companies that sent more than two billion spam messages to the software giant's customers, many of whom use its free Hotmail service.

The COMPAS poll was carried out between July 8 and July 10 and is considered accurate to within 9%, 19 times out of 20.

FP CEO POLL:

- How many minutes do you waste each day clearing your in box of spam?

40+ minutes: 4%

31-40: n/a

21-30: 8%

11-20: 25%

1-10: 60%

Zero minutes: n/a

- Which of the following opinions about spam or unsolicited commercial e-mail is closest to your own?

The issue is that spam risks doing serious harm to both real business and the good of society and should be properly regulated by government 74%

The issue is freedom and there should be no government interference at all 21%

Don't know/refused 5%

- Some people suggest that Canada has an unsavoury history as a haven for corrupt telemarketers and stock-touting boiler-room operations. In your judgment has government done . . .:

Far too much to control this 0%

Too much 1%

About the right amount 23%

Too little 45%

Far too little 26%

Don't know/refused 5%

The full technical report and data not graphically displayed above are available at www.compas.ca. Letters on the substance of the issue are welcome at [email protected], while letters on survey methodology are welcome at [email protected]

Source: COMPAS Inc., National Post

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