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Interesting article...


DCSmooth

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Not sure if this is old news or not, but my jaw dropped at the 10% figure. I knew somebody had to buying their products for so much spam to be spewing, but I had never imagined that large of a percentage!

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/tech/packa...pam/buyfromspam

Here's a cut/paste of the 1st couple paragraphs for convenience:

Fully one-third of us have clicked on a link in a spam e-mail message--you know, the kind that can easily expose us to viruses and alert spammers to live e-mail accounts--and one in 10 have actually purchased products advertised in junk e-mail, according to a survey conducted by the security firm Mirapoint and the market research company the Radicati Group.

Another 18 percent of respondents have tried to unsubscribe to spam using the "unsubscribe" link in the e-mail. This isn't any better than clicking on links embedded within spam messages, since many spammers exploit the unsubscribe link to identify active e-mail accounts. Once individual e-mail addresses or entire domains are found to be active, the likelihood of follow-on spam or other security attacks increases dramatically.

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  • 2 months later...
Not sure if this is old news or not ...

28738[/snapback]

More in the same vein - the full Mirapoint/Radicati report ("End-User Study on Email Hygiene") was released 12 July, the main points are charted at http://www.radicati.com/email_survey2005.shtml

One point not shown in that presentation is that "57 percent of respondents that click on spam links say they receive more spam." One would need to know a little more about the survey construction and methodology but I say this certainly is more impression than hard fact - the actual, longer-term result is likely to be more like 100%. The study was conducted in March and April of 2005 and "was comprised of 34 percent corporate business users and 66 percent consumers", total "just under 800".

In a news release, Bethany Mayer, chief marketing officer at Mirapoint said “Only a combination of federal legislation, user education and effective technology will help us stamp out the problem of spam.” She speaks more truly about "education" than, perhaps, she knows - the full report is available for "free" from Radicati at http://www.radicati.com/cgi-local/registry....pdf?pub_id=495

The attached rider to that is "Please note that by requesting this document, you will be automatically added to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe from this list at any time, please send an email to list[at]radicati.com with "unsubscribe" in the subject field."

Now *that* doesn't sound like the expected standard of responsible list management! Still, it's their bandwidth, they usually charge $2,500 for their reports, I would be inclined to forgive them. But it *does* seem just a touch ironic! And I haven't requested a copy.

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... "57 percent of respondents that click on spam links say they receive more spam"...

31234[/snapback]

Which is a pretty meaningless statement on behalf of the presenters. It seems a given that the amount of spam in the world is increasing. So users would receive more spam whether or not they followed the links in their spam. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

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I shall add "But don't forget to check the homepage."

31263[/snapback]

True, but you'd have to know to click on "End-User Study on Email Hygiene" on the homepage and allow java scri_pt to open the 15KB cover page, see the word "Download" at the far right side of the masthead, and click on that word to get to http://www.radicati.com/cgi-local/download....pdf?pub_id=495 (the full 65KB 19-page version). I'd rather my readers not have to work that hard on someone else's site.
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... I'd rather my readers not have to work that hard on someone else's site.

31273[/snapback]

Thanks again Jeff - I was berating myself before, but evidently not hard enough. Wazoo once pointed out to me the (lack of) ethics in pointing to other people's freebies without doing them the courtesy of wading through their promotional/potentially useful lead-in pages to get there. Guess I haven't taken that on board sufficiently either. You've now provided both routes (possibly showing not everyone would be able to get through the long path anyway, depending on their security settings). I shall try a bit harder in future :( but to keep, in this instance, your helpfully-provided direct link to the forefront, it is http://www.radicati.com/cgi-local/download....pdf?pub_id=495

I think, as the OP did, that this stuff is interesting ... and rather alarming, if not disheartening.

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