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Everybody Failed The Spam Quiz
SecurityProNews
Staff Writer
2006-09-26
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
McAfee says that though consumers may be more Internet-savvy than ever, they're still highly susceptible to spam. The security company unveiled the results of its first-ever "spam quiz," showing that consumers misjudge whether a Website will keep email addresses private.
The quiz, conducted by the McAfee SiteAdvisor team, showed consumers the homepages and privacy policy links of eight pairs of Web sites, asking them to judge which site from each pair would likely guard their e-mail address.
For the 7,000 people that took the quiz, the average score was only 55%, indicating that consumers are poor judges of which Web sites share e-mail addresses with third-party advertisers.
Some of the findings of the spam quiz:
The average test taker answered three to four questions incorrectly on the eight-question quiz. A consumer who chose the three "worst" sites would have received as many as 2,000 e-mails per week. On average, submitting an e-mail address to just one of the quiz's risky sites could lead to over 300 spammy e-mails per week.
Even though each site featured in the quiz included a prominent link to its privacy policy, only half the respondents reviewed the sites' privacy policies before submitting their answers.
One featured site had its privacy policy link conspicuously missing. Still, nearly half the quiz takers incorrectly chose that site as safe, instead of the other site that did include a privacy policy.
Credit cards and online dating were the most difficult categories. Only 44% and 40% of quiz takers, respectively, answered these questions correctly. The streamlined design of the risky sites in these categories may have given consumers a false sense of security.
"Spam is more than just an annoyance - it makes the e-mail inbox one of the primary gateways for viruses, phishing attacks and identity theft," said Chris Dixon, director of strategy, McAfee SiteAdvisor. "Moreover, uncertainty about Web site e-mail practices has caused consumer skepticism about registering for newsletters, forums and other safe online pursuits."
The examples used for the spam quiz were taken from a pool of 6.7 million Web sites where McAfee registered with a unique, one-time-use e-mail address in order to measure the volume and content of subsequent e-mail from each tested site.
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SecurityProNews is a daily online and email publication focusing on internet security issues.
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