Have we succumbed to spam? A study by Pew Internet & American Life Project reports fewer people see spam as big hassle. Couple that with 37 percent of survey recipients saying they are getting more spam at home and 29 percent say they've seen an increase in their work inboxes.
This suggests to me that spam is joining other Internet white noise annoyances like pop-up ads and banner ads like the LowerMyBills.com ads that show the endless loops of silhouetted dancers.
Pew researchers cite two main reasons fewer people say that spam is a big problem for them. One, the volume of porn (and related) spam has decreased. And two, "people are becoming more knowledgeable about spam," the study reports.
The study (PDF file) suggests people are also slowly wising up to fight spam, with 71 percent of e-mail users say they use spam filters -- up from 65 percent two years ago. That's a meager 6 percent jump.
Maybe it's true we are caring less about spam. I certainly don't flinch anymore as I'm greeted by the nearly 20 to 30 spam messages in my inbox each morning.
Interesting Data Points
* The percentage of e-mail users who report getting less spam has decreased over the last three years to just 10 percent of e-mail users.
* The percentage of users who say spam is not at all a problem has risen from 16 to 28 percent.
* 52 percent of e-mail users report having received pornographic spam, down from 63 percent two years ago and 71 percent three years ago.
* Fewer women than men say they received spam with adult content (46 vs. 58 percent).
* 55 percent say spam has made them less trusting of e-mail in general.
The survey was conducted over the telephone with 1492 U.S. adult Internet users participating. The study was conducted from February 15 to March 7, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
When you have as incompetent a legislative response to SPAM as the US as well as other countries, and when the largest software company in the world cannot seem to control spam to the degree Yahoo or Google can ... people begin to give up, feeling it's all impossible. And it is, given the lack of will displayed through actual effort. Fact is- spam doesn't directly hurt these businesses and does directly benefit a host of others (Norton, McAfee, etc).
I personally miss the old SPAM of yesteryear. I'll take the porn SPAM over boring broken-english penny stocks and silly drug treatments any day.
It is amazing how much power SPAM has. I've recently read about Multi-billion dollar media companies who own no content. They seem to be looking for automated ways to continue to pick up free content to broadcast to their customers without trampling on their own advertising programs.
It's very curious to know that there is no SPAM on television.
Have a wonderful day,
Waitman Gobble
Los Altos, California
"...there is no SPAM on television."
Maybe if you disregard all the regular commercials, infomercials, sponsored segments/on-screen elements, etc. Otherwise TV is no different. Not to mention some of the actual programs themselves (e.g. Reality TV, Dr. Phil, Oprah, etc.).
Over-reacting to SPAM. Are we throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I have an incredible and low tech answer to SPAM. It is called the , DELETE button. You can learn to use it in 1 simple lesson.
I mean SPAM is really about feeling neglected. Ping goes your PC, WOW someone loves me, they have sent me an email, and then disappointment. It is only an advert for viagra.
Meanwhile, it is now estimated that 20% of legitimate emails are blocked and all because, 'Nobody loves ya baby'
The DELETE button is not an answer in my opinion, there is too much of that junk to handle by less than automatic methods.
I believe we need two things:
1. I use a program that sends an automatic response to all addresses on my white list requesting confirmation and entry of a code before the email comes out of the trash bin. This works well for personal use, but we would need everyone to agree that this is proper procedure. No complaining about how you have to prove you are a human before someone will read your email.
2. Something needs to be done about people pretending to be me by sending out emails with my From: address. You would think it would be as easy as prohibiting mail programs from sending emails with a From that did not match the users domain, but I understand there are issues for larger systems doing fancy email routing.
"The survey was conducted over the telephone..."
I wonder how many people actually hung up on the "researchers" and were annoyed by the telephone SPAM? I'd much rather get it in my email than on my phone!