False-positives are really nasty.

In a recent study by Brockmann & Company, the cost of false-positives was considered – 36% of users' companies have lost business as a result of an email not arriving. To supplement this statistic, we asked respondents about their most valuable email, calculated in the Problem with Email report and presented the hundreds of responses in the Comments section of the site. 

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Even still, it's one thing to miss out on the most valuable email ever received, but it's another thing to lose business by missing out on a meeting request.

In this July 12, 2007 article in PCWorld.com by Robert McMillan, an anecdote about the impact of false-positives in a law firm is discussed:

On the morning of May 21, Rea dialed up the spam settings on the Barracuda Spam Firewall 200 Azar & Associates was using to block unwanted mail. The changes made it harder for spam to land on the desktops of company employees but they also had one unforeseen consequence: the Barracuda Networks Inc. appliance began blocking e-mail from the United States District Court for the District of Colorado, including a notice advising company lawyers of a May 30 hearing in a civil lawsuit.

Azar & Associates lawyers blew their court date and this week the judge overseeing the matter ordered the company to pay attorney fees and expenses incurred by the lawyers who showed up representing the other side of the case. Rea did not return a call seeking comment on the matter.

  We have a false-positive epidemic now because of the over-use of filtering technology. This is the flaw in email management today. 

In research that Brockmann & Company is releasing next week, challenge-response technology minimizes false-positives and delivers a significantly lower Spam Index

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