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April 15, 2005
Pew Study Says We're Getting Used to Spam
A study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project on spam and attitudes towards it makes some noteworthy claims:
- 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.
In other news, 2% of the population surveyed are apparently dumb as bricks, and provided information to phishing scams asking for their banking information, social security numbers, and so on, which explains why we see so much phishing scam mail here. 6% have purchased items advertised in spam, which explains why we continue to see so much spam everywhere.
The overall picture seems to be that younger users are more accepting of spam as a fact of life, that people are getting less of certain types of spam (such as porn) and more phishing scams, and that more than half of those surveyed think spam is a big problem. I wish this study had been corrected for those who have ISPs who do their blocking for them; although they do correct for how long they've been on the Internet, it doesn't make it clear whether it also corrects for the age of their accounts. I've been online since 1991, but had more than a dozen different primary email addresses. And though it is stated that two-thirds use filters provided by their email provider, it doesn't correlate that to whether they're finding time online more or less annoying. Still, a worthwhile read.
Posted by schampeo at April 15, 2005 9:26 AM