I think it's almost impossible to overstate the effect that this has on consumer confidence.
I can recall, actually, that when we launched the spam task force, there was a press conference. I remember one of the reporters turned to the task force members and asked--I happened to be the one who responded--what would make this a success. I noted that when e-mail first arose back in the mid-nineties, people started popularly using it. You used to follow up with a phone call to make sure that the person got the message. Then there was a period of time when we stopped doing that. We just assumed that the message had been received.
We're back to making that phone call. If you don't hear back from the person within a day or so, you almost assume that you either have to pick up the phone or re-send the message because it's been caught in the spam filter. It has rendered what is otherwise an exceptionally important tool for communication into one that is simply not reliable any more.