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Last Updated: Dec 19th, 2007 - 13:17:15 |
More than a year after the CAN-SPAM
Act became law, email users say they are receiving slightly more spam in their
inboxes than before, but they are minding it less.
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| The US product SPAM luncheon pork
meat (spiced ham) played a crucial role overseas during World War II. With
Allied forces fighting to liberate Europe, Hormel Foods provided 15 million cans
of food to troops each week. SPAM immediately became a constant part of a
soldiers' diets, and earned much praise for feeding the starving British and
Soviet armies as well as civilians. After the War, it was sold in both the UK
and Ireland. In 1937, Hormel Foods created the first commercial radio jingle
which began: "SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM...." Hormel Foods says in relation to the
use of the word "spam" for unsolicited commerecial email (UCE) : Use of the term
"spam" was adopted as a result of the Monty Python skit in which our SPAM meat
product was featured. In this skit, a group of Vikings sang a chorus of "spam,
spam, spam . . . " in an increasing crescendo, drowning out other conversation.
Hence, the analogy applied because UCE was drowning out normal discourse on the
Internet. |
A survey by the Pew Internet &
American Life Project published on Sunday and conducted between January 13 and
February 9, 2005, shows the following:
28% of users with a personal email
account say they are getting more spam than a year ago, while 22% say they are
getting less.
21% of users with a work email
account say they are getting more spam than a year ago, while 16% say they are
getting less.
53% of email users say spam has
made them less trusting of email, compared to 62% a year ago.
22% of email users say that spam
has reduced their overall use of email, compared to 29% a year ago.
67% of email users say spam has
made being online unpleasant or annoying, compared to 77% a year ago.
Overall, more than half of all
internet users (52%) complain that spam is a big problem.
Among other things, the survey
found that people were getting less porn spam, a uniquely troubling form of spam
for most users and particularly for women. While 63% of email users now say they
have received porn spam, down 8 percentage points from a year ago, 29% of those
email users say they are now getting less porn spam, compared to 16% who said
they are getting more.
And in a first-time measure of
“phishing,” or unsolicited email requesting personal financial information, 35%
of users say they have received such email, and 2% have responded by providing
the information.
Further Analysis
Slightly Increasing Volume of
Spam
Those who keep tabs on
spam report major increases in the volume of spam over the last year. For
example, the spam filtering company MessageLabs has reported that in an average
month during 2004, spam constituted 73% of email, up from 40% in 2003.1
The early 2005 survey by
the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that while more users report
an increase than a decrease in spam over the last year, the numbers are much
more modest than the dramatic increases reported by spam filtering companies
that track spam volumes. In personal email accounts, which have always received
more spam than work email accounts, 47% of users say they noticed no change in
volume of spam, 28% said they were getting more spam, and 22% said they were
getting less spam than a year ago. In work mail accounts, 53% of users
reported no change, 21% said they were getting more spam, and 16% said they were
getting less spam.
This differential
between very big increases in calculated spam volume on the internet
(an 83% increase reported by
MessageLabs) and very modest yet statistically significant increases in spam reported by
emailers, suggests that for whatever reason – better filters, more filters, better spam
avoidance behavior by users – not much of that additional spam is making it to the
inboxes of users.
Declining Impact of
Spam
Over the last year and a
half, the Pew Internet & American Life Project has been polling internet
users about their awareness, behavior, and attitudes toward spam. In a June,
2003, survey, 25% of internet users reported they were using email less because
of spam, and 52% said spam made them less trusting of email in general. In
addition, some 71% said that spam made being online unpleasant or
annoying.
About 8 months later,
and two months after the CAN-SPAM Act became law, the negatives intensified,
despite the fact that the law was designed to apply restrictions to unsolicited
commercial email. Respondents to our survey suggested that users’ frustrations
with spam were mounting and the quality of their internet experience was
declining. In February, 2004, some 29% of email users said they were using email
less because of spam (up 4 points), and 62% said spam had caused them to lose
trust in email (up 10 points). And 77% of users said spam made being online
unpleasant or annoying (up 6 points). All increases were statistically
significant.
Nearly another year
later, in January, 2005, the Pew Internet Project again polled internet users on
some of the questions about spam. This time, negatives fell back significantly,
reverting to their mid-2003 figures or even lower. This suggests the findings
from almost one year ago might have represented a spike or a high point, rather
than a growing negative trend of the impact of spam on the internet
experience.
© Copyright 2007 by Finfacts.com
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