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Spam Is Up, Few People Care
David Utter
Staff Writer
2007-05-24
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The amount of spam peppering inboxes has increased, but fewer people are bothered by the endless parade of phishing and stock scams.
 | | Spam Is Up, Few People Care |  |
Better spam filtering and less pornography have contributed to a virtually carefree attitude toward spam by a lot of people.
A recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 37 percent of personal email users, and 29 percent of work email users, said the volume of spam has grown.
Only ten percent of people have seen spam decrease over the past three years.
Only 18 percent of email users find spam a big problem.
That is a drop from the 25 percent cited by Pew in June 2003.
About 51 percent of email users consider spam an annoyance but not a big problem.
The extreme reactions people, especially women, have to adult oriented spam have dropped over the past few years.
Spammers have lessened the adult emails they send, due to other efforts like sending malware being much more profitable.
With less spam that could be seen as offensive or obscene, there are fewer complaints about it.
Pew said 52 percent of email users now report receiving it, compared to 71 percent three years ago.
Frequent news stories about spam have likely helped to build public awareness of it.
More people recognize spam these days, 68 percent of email users doing so.
And 71 percent have filters in place, either through work or ones they establish themselves.
Even though spam is not as much of a worry, email's integrity has taken a big hit to its perception.
Some 55 percent of people surveyed have lost trust in email due to the continued influx of spam.
Age is a factor in spam reactions as well. Pew described these as nuances of differences among respondents.
Older Internet users, those age 50 and up, don't find spam as annoying as their 18-49 counterparts.
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Tag: Spam
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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