Drowning in e-mails – from a helper to a burden and how to get back to an efficient use of e-mail

Table of Contents

List of Figures

1. Introduction
1.1 Scope of the work and Structure of the Seminar Paper

2. Problems resulting from increasing Email Traffic
2.1 Technical Problems
2.2 Economical Problems
2.3 Personal Problems

3. Personal and Business related Email
3.1 Email Lifecycle Management
3.2 ELM Process

4. Unsolicited commercial Messages: SPAM
4.1 Spam Filter
4.1.1 Classical Filter Methods
4.1.2 New Approaches for encountering spam
4.2 Legislation

5. Concluding Remarks

References

List of Figures

Fig.1: Different Processes in an E-mail Lifecycle

Fig. 2: Scheme Email Lifecycle Management

Fig. 3: Content of received Email

1. Introduction

The significance of email as a modern medium for communication has grown fast and sustainable. The technical basis, especially the availability of a digital infrastructure enabled the global spread of email as a user friendly, flexible and versatile medium. By now email can be considered as one of the most frequently used applications of the internet. The advantages of email as being low in costs but high in speed and reliability led to its increasing use and significance. Furthermore its quality of being “viral” through easy forwarding and multi-receiver-sending has opened new possibilities for communication. On the one hand the disposability of email has led to these new trends, on the other hand the very same quality can be held responsible for the short-lived and unsustainable attributes of email.^[1]

Since the emergence of the first communication through electronic mail the face of email concerning both quality and quantity has changed significantly. In terms of quality it has changed from a simple substitute for the hand written letter to today’s most important tool for collaboration, knowledge-management, online marketing and global business communication. Furthermore it is “now used for multiple purposes: document delivery and archiving, work task delegation; and task tracking. It is also used for storing personal names and addresses, for sending reminders, asking for assistance, scheduling appointments, and for handling technical queries.” Electronic mail can be considered as vital precursor for globalization and the modern information society.

Its commercial use for offers, contracts, orders etc. created demand for an obliging and explicit legal framework together with new standards regarding electronic signature, identification and data safety.

The trend of an increasing quantity of electronic mail is strongly related to its development, standardization and availability of digital infrastructure. The exponentially increasing amount of email per day has led to serious problems regarding efficiency in the use of the medium and to new challenges both for the technical infrastructure, the software and the user.

1.1 Scope of the Work and Structure of the Seminar Paper

The topic of this paper is how the increasing amount of email traffic is affecting the efficient use of the medium negative and which strategies may be promising to find back to a pleasant and efficient use for personal and business related communication. The scope of the work is to give a general overview of emerging problems, of the different components of the increasing email traffic and possible solutions to encounter the problems.

After a general introduction in chapter one, chapter two focuses on the emerging problems related to increasing mail traffic. The different areas in which problems occur are introduced separately. Chapter three and four describe the two main components of the increasing traffic, relevant private and business related correspondence on the one side and spam email on the other side. Strategies how to cope with the increasing mail volume are given for each problem. Chapter four introduces different spam filters and a legal framework to encounter spam. Chapter five gives a short conclusion of the paper. The paper ends with the listing of all references.

2. Problems resulting from increasing Email Traffic

The data volume generated by electronic mail has been growing constantly since the beginning of digital communication. Even though “advantages over other technologies such as the telephone, and even face-to-face interacting”^[2] are pointed out by users, its trend of an exponential growth through out the years has led to the emergence of serious problems due to limitations of the related resources. The problems can be split up into three different main areas:

- technical limitations such as memory and bandwidth
- monetary limitations due to increasing needs for technical equipment and human labor for administering the incoming and outgoing data
- personal limitations such as decreasing trust and willingness to use the medium
All these consequences cause higher costs for all participating parties. Important IT-Resources are blocked, the effective and efficient use of email is prevented and the productivity of the user is lowered.

2.1 Technical Problems

Negative effects through spam appear in all areas where technical infrastructure is involved. Especially ISPs which are running the mail servers are strongly affected by the increasing data volume and higher costs.

According to an IDC study, the number of email per day will grow from 5 billion in 1999 to estimated 60 billion in 2006.^[3] With an average data volume of 59 KB/mail, the daily data volume has grown up to 1.829 Terabyte per day, loading the global mail server infrastructure with 3.35 Petabyte per year, according to Forrester Research.^[4]

The performance of the whole internet is stressed. To cope with these high data volumes, ISPs have to invest capital which is, in the end, paid by the user and the customer community.

2.2 Economical Problems

On the one hand „email has contributed to the growth of distributed organizations, by allowing people in different geographical areas to communicate across time and space.”^[5] Since the spread of email for business related communication email has increased efficiency and led to economical growth.

By today, employees spend high amounts of their work time using email for variable tasks. Employees suffer from the increasing volume of email in their inbox. The over all efficiency is affected negative. Results are additional costs for economy and public.

By the year 2000, 43% of all incoming mail in a professional environment was not business related.^[6] Additional costs companies around the world will have to invest in 2003 in terms of additional server infrastructure to manage the high data volume are estimated $20,500,000,000.^[7] A company with 10,000 email users without anti-spam protection will loose 49$ per year per mailbox due to decreasing efficiency of the employees.^[8]

Other related problems for the companies can emerge in terms of workflow due to email and important information being overlooked or lost by the employees, “outstanding tasks, partially read documents and conversational threads“^[9]. In a long term prospective the use of email as a reliable medium for global communication can loose its credibility.

2.3 Personal Problems

As well on a personal level the individual user is affected negative by spam. The emergence of spam has led to significant change in the relationship of the users to the internet and how they evaluate the internet. Even the users’ behavior has been affected. Common effects are that users use email less because of spam, they loose trust in the medium. Common fears are that important mail is being overlooked or children are affected negative by the offensive content of spam.^[10]

According to Pew Internet & American Life Project, 25% of the users say the ever increasing volume of spam has reduced their overall use of email^[11] ; 70% of email users say spam has made being online unpleasant or annoying. Only 14% say spam is no problem at all.^[12]

In general the perceived negative effects by the users are of higher gravity concerning their personal email accounts compared to their work email accounts. Even though the overall number of received email is higher in the work email account, the relative percentage of spam is higher in the personal email account. Many work email accounts are pre-filtered by the companies IT-infrastructure.^[13]

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^[1] See STEIN (2004), p. 1.

^[2] See SIDNER AND WHITTAKER (1996), p. 2.

^[3] See IDC (NO YEAR).

^[4] See FORRESTER RESEARCH (2002).

^[5] See SIDNER AND WHITTAKER (1996), p. 1.

^[6] See RAY, THOMAS AND DARREN (NO YEAR), p. 2.

^[7] See EPRIVACY GROUP (2003), p. 1.

^[8] See EPRIVACY GROUP (2003), p. 1.

^[9] See SIDNER AND WHITTAKER (1996), p. 1.

^[10] See FELLOWS (2003), p. 29.

^[11] See FELLOWS (2003), p. I.

^[12] See FELLOWS (2003), p. II.

^[13] See FELLOWS (2003), p. 38.