Survey: 52 Percent Have Clicked On A Spam Email
We all get spam. Some of us get tons of the stuff and so, we recognize it more easily. When someone tries to sell me Viagra, I know not to click. Mostly because I'm a woman and have no use for that sort of thing, but also because I'm not a fool and those kinds of emails just scream spam-scam. Apparently not all of us can spot spam a mile away.
A recent report by Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) shows that there are plenty of people willing to respond to the trashy emails that land in their inbox every day. MAAWG conducted hundreds of interviews across the country. Those interview were folks with email addresses not managed by a corporate IT staff and the results are pretty unbelievable.
More than half said they had clicked on a spam email and 12 percent said it was because they were interested in the product being peddled. MAAWG reported that two-thirds of the group said that they were very or somewhat experienced with Internet security, and a majority used filters of some kind in order to avoid spam. Eighty-two percent were aware of bots and botnets, however not many believed they were at risk of being victimized by one.
Have you ever tried to buy something from a spam email? Let us know!
Read the full store on Ars Technica.
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I set the spam filter to disabled. I don't get enough spam to warrant it and my spam filter seems to filter out important work related e-mails more than it filters out genuine spam. I use an e-mail account with my university which is why the spam filter is so crap.
I have to admit though, I love looking at the subjects of some of my spam email!
my gmail account has a 10 on filtering spam, so I don't need to use a filter. I just once in a while go there and make sure no important mail got there, but never failed yet.
and, of course,my mail is never exposed on forwards chains everyone likes, and if it does, the resposible person gets to be warned not to do so again.