Not-so-hidden cost of spam: $250,000

In March, I wrote an essay called "Hidden costs of spam". I discussed many of the uncounted costs of spam, including that of false positives.

In this week's news we manage to count one of those costs. According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a school system in Cobb County was accepting bids for a new phone system by email. Their spam filters gobbled up the lowest bid, so they wound up going with BellSouth, who charged them $250,000 more than the lowest bidder would have.