Spam emails are wasting hundreds of work hours every year TechRadar Skip to main content TechRadar is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here's why you can trust us. Spam emails are wasting hundreds of work hours every year By Sead Fadilpašić published 1 June 2022 Productivity is also being hit by spam (Image credit: Shutterstock) Audio player loading… Spam email messages might be perceived as nothing more than a nuisance, but they're actually hurting people's productivity quite a lot, according to a Kaspersky report showing people can lose up to 80 hours a year just scrolling through, or filtering out, spam messages. Citing a report on Security Boulevard, the company says anywhere between 45% and 85% of all emails generated every day is actual spam (including emails carrying malware (opens in new tab) and other malicious files). But not all employees receive the same amount of spam messages, nor do they address them in the same way. Those that receive up to 30 external emails a day, also receive around 30 spam messages every week. It takes them roughly five hours a year to sort these messages out. (opens in new tab) Share your thoughts on Cybersecurity and get a free copy of the Hacker's Manual 2022 (opens in new tab). Help us find how businesses are preparing for the post-Covid world and the implications of these activities on their cybersecurity plans. Enter your email at the end of this survey (opens in new tab) to get the bookazine, worth $10.99/£10.99. Law of large numbers Those getting between 30 and 60 external emails a day usually spend roughly 11 hours a year on the same task, while those on the receiving end of up to 100 emails a day spend as much as 18 hours - more than two full days - sorting these messages in their inboxes. Finally, those that receive more than 100 messages every day usually need around 80 hours a year to clean up their inboxes. For Andrey Kovtun, Email Threats Protection Group Manager at Kaspersky, five hours in a year might not sound like much, but there are hidden dangers that should not be dropped out of sight. Read more> Unsubscribing from that email may just lead to further spam (opens in new tab) > Tired of Google RCS spam - Here's how you can turn it off (opens in new tab) > Spam calls and emails saw a huge rise this year (opens in new tab) "When scaled to an organization with hundreds of employees, this may turn into a sizable amount of person-hours. The number may look greater in businesses focused on providing services where employees communicate more actively with external parties," he said. Kovtun also added that returning to work after reading and deleting spam messages takes a little time as well, mostly because people get distracted. "These negative effects of spam may not be so obvious, but organizations should be aware of them and protect their employees with dedicated anti-spam and anti-phishing tools." Besides the obvious move of having anti-spam and junk email functions enabled in the email service, businesses should also educate employees to recognize spam messages, as well as implement dedicated email protection services. Keep your devices safe with the best endpoint protection services out there (opens in new tab) Sead Fadilpašić Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he's written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He's also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications. See more Computing news Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to theTechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Thank you for signing up to TechRadar. You will receive a verification email shortly. There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again. MOST POPULARMOST SHARED1The iPhone 14 Pro is made of the wrong stuff; the Pixel 7 proves that to me2Blizzard made me explain Overwatch 2 smurfing to my mum for nothing3Nvidia RTX 4090 Ti reportedly canned due to sky-high power consumption4Apple October launches: the new devices we might see this month5RTX 4090 too expensive? Nvidia resurrects another old favorite1Best laptops for designers and coders 2The iPhone 14 Pro is made of the wrong stuff; the Pixel 7 proves that to me3Stop saying Mario doesn't have an accent in The Super Mario Bros. Movie4iPhone 15 tipped to come with an upgraded 5G chip5Google Pixel Tablet is what Apple should've done ages ago Technology Magazines (opens in new tab)● (opens in new tab)The best tech tutorials and in-depth reviewsFrom$12.99 (opens in new tab)View (opens in new tab)