A new survey on spam and e-mail found that people are getting slightly more spam in their in-boxes, but because less of it is pornographic, they're not as upset as in the past.
The telephone survey, done in January and February by the Washington-based Pew Internet & American Life Project, asked 1421 randomly dialed Internet users for their opinions about spam, e-mail, and any phishing scams they've received.
Deborah Fallows, a senior research fellow with the group, says the data showed that people seem to be less bothered by spam recently because they've seen a decline in the receipt of the most offensive category of unsolicited messages--pornography.
"If you're getting less of the spam that bothers you most," the rest of it isn't seen to be as much of a problem, Fallows says. The decline is at least in part a result of the federal CAN-SPAM Act, she says, which went into effect on January 1, 2004. The CAN-SPAM Act, or Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003, prohibits the use of false header information in bulk commercial e-mail and requires unsolicited messages to include opt-out instructions. Penalties for violations include fines of up to $250 per e-mail, and are capped at $6 million. The antispam measure has been used by law enforcement agencies to go after senders of pornographic e-mails and assess fines or put them behind bars.
The passage of the law "certainly didn't hurt," Fallows says. "The spammers are aware that litigators are targeting this, and they know it's a point of vulnerability."
Overall, the amount of spam sent out is up by about 80 percent, according to some estimates, she says. But much of that isn't getting through to users because of antispam filters and controls.
Additional Findings
The survey also found that:
- 63 percent of e-mail users say they have received porn spam, down eight percentage points from a year ago; 29 percent of those users say they now get less porn spam, while 16 percent say they are getting more.
- 28 percent of users with a personal e-mail account say they are getting more spam than a year ago; 22 percent say they are getting less.
- 21 percent of users with a work e-mail account say they are getting more spam than a year ago, while 16 percent say they are getting less.
- 53 percent of e-mail users say spam has made them less trusting of e-mail, compared to 62 percent who felt that way a year ago. And 22 percent of e-mail users say spam has led them to reduce their use of e-mail, compared to 29 percent who said that last year.
- 35 percent of the users say they have received "phishing" e-mails that sought personal financial information. Two percent of those users say they responded and provided the requested information.
Because users are able to rely on software filters and antispam programs to handle incoming spam, they feel more in control of their own computing experiences, Fallows says. "You want to do your e-mail, so you tolerate your spam," she says.
Users' views of what actually is spam are also changing, according to the survey. In June 2003, 74 percent of recipients considered unsolicited e-mail from a political or advocacy group to be spam, but by January 2005, that number had slipped to 66 percent.
The nonprofit Pew Internet & American Life Project is funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts to examine the social impact of the Internet.
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