網際網路與電子郵件的發達，造成了今日垃圾郵件的氾濫，國內外皆然。垃圾郵件不但造成經濟成本耗損，更多的問題也隨之而生例如:穩私權的問題、詐欺、色情暴力、資訊安全、降低消費者信心、破壞企業及國家形象等。所產產生的危害問題，主要包括侵犯個人隱私、詐欺犯罪、危害資訊安全、盜冒身份、降低消費者信心與色情危害等。其可能造成的社會損失主要有(1)員工生產力的損失；(2)網路及電腦資源的損失；(3)額外的人力支援及建置資訊設備的財務負擔；(4)資訊安全的風險增高；(5)行銷效果及企業形象不良影響等。根據The Radicate Group(2003b)估計，2003年全球企業之垃圾郵件成本高達200億美元，預計到2007年將會增加為1,980億美元成長近10倍。根據消基會在2005年10月所進行調查，發現台灣每人每年至少要耗費30個鐘頭刪除垃圾揶件；以全台上網使用人口1,466萬計算，則台灣每年至少耗費4億3,980萬個小時在刪除廣告垃圾郵件。又假設每個人的工時成本為100元，每年全台就花費439億8千萬元刪除郵件的工資，其成本不可謂不高。台灣針對「垃圾郵件」相關法規尚在立法階段，所以當務之急，政府相關主管必須儘速完成相關垃圾郵件的立法，否則台灣垃圾郵件未來所可能衍生的各種社會問題與產生的經濟成本，只會越來越嚴重，與越來越龐大。

The growth of the Internet and e-mail has induced a dramatic growth in SPAM
(i.e. the unsolicited electronic messages). The problems caused by the SPAM includes: violation of personal privacy、fraud and deception、pornography、information security、identity theft、reduced consumer confidence. Furthermore, in order to deal with the problem resulting from SPAM, a company may incur a lot of economic costs, such as (1) direct loss of employees’ productivity; (2) loss of network and computing resources; (3) addition human resources and related financial expenditures; (4)security risks and;(5) potential legal liability. According to the estimates published by The Radicate Group (2003b), the total global business economic cost caused by SPAM was about $20 U.S. billion dollars; and that cost would grow almost 10 times by 2007 and reach $198 U.S. billion dollars as predicted. A survey regarding to Taiwan consumers concern of SPAM was conducted by the ROC Consumer’ Foundation recently (2005/10). The survey revealed that a typical consumer would have to spend 30 hours to delete the SPAM in a year; based on the assumption that
there are 1.466 million Taiwan consumers using Internet, and then the total loss in deleting SPAM will be 4.398 million hours. In terms of the economic cost, the total loss would be worth of $439.8 Million N.T. dollars, assuming hour wage to be 100 N.T. dollars. One of the most urgent measures to reduce the SPAM in Taiwan is to try to set up specific laws or decrees on SPAM as soon as possible.