WASHINGTON (October 22, 2003) — The recent explosion of email spam is
beginning to take its toll on the Internet world. A new nationwide survey
shows that 25% of America’s email users say they are using email less
because of spam. Within that group, most say that spam has reduced their
overall use of email in a big way.Further, more than half of email users say that spam has made them less
trusting of email in general. One of their fears is that legitimate emails
might be turned away by filters designed to stop spam. Another is that
they’ll simply miss incoming email from friends, family, or colleagues amid
the clutter of spam in their inboxes.
A new report entitled “Spam: Hurting email and degrading the Internet
environment,”by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, includes scores
of stories gathered in a Web-survey by the Washington-based
Telecommunications Research & Action Center about how spam has affected
people’s experience with email and changed their views about the value of
email.
“People just love email, and it really bothers them that spam is ruining
such a good thing,” said Deborah Fallows, Senior Research Fellow at the Pew
Internet & American Life Project and author of the report. “People resent
spam’s intrusions; they are angered by its deceptions; and they are
offended by much of the truly disgusting content.”
Here are some other key figures from a national phone survey of 1,380
Internet users conducted by the Pew Internet Project in June. The survey
has a margin of error of plus or minus three points:
* 75% of email users are bothered that they cant stop the flow of spam,
no matter what they do
* 70% of email users say spam has made being online unpleasant or
annoying.
* 55% of email users say they get so many unwanted email messages in
their personal account that it’s hard to get to the ones they want
* 30% of email users are concerned that their filtering devices may
block incoming email that is important to them.
Despite their dismay, most Internet users keep the issue of spam in
perspective. For them, spam takes its place next to life’s other
annoyances, like telemarketing calls. Further, many users believe they know
how to behave in a spam-saturated environment. The most popular way of
dealing with spam is to simply click “delete.” More than 2/3 have made a
more aggressive move, clicking to “remove me” from future mailings,
although many voice concern that doing so only leads to more spam.
And most email users are judicious about guarding their email addresses in
hopes of avoiding spam. A minority employ their own filters, either in
work or personal accounts.
At the same time, there is evidence in the survey that enough Americans
respond to offers in unsolicited email to sustain spam as a viable,
lucrative endeavor. Some 7% of emailers–more than eight million
people–report they have ordered a product or service that was offered in
an unsolicited email. Fully a third of email users say they have clicked on
a link in unsolicited commercial email to get more information.
The report argues that Americans are somewhat fuzzy when it comes to
defining spam, an issue of critical importance to legislators as they
tackle anti-spam legislation in Congress. There is consensus that spam is
“unsolicited commercial email from a sender you don’t know.” However,
messages with religious, political, or charity fundraising content are spam
to some users, but not others. And users have varying answers about how
businesses should interpret their prior relationship with customers. There
is not a clear consensus among users about the circumstances under which
they are “known” by a seller or “have a relationship with” a firm.
“The general findings are striking, but inside the data are even more
disturbing details about the reactions women and parents have with
pornographic spam,” said Fallows. “Pornographers deserve a special place in
hell as far as they are concerned.”
The Pew Internet & American Life Project is a non-profit, non-partisan
research organization funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts to examine the
social impact of the Internet.
The Telecommunications Research & Action Center (TRAC) is a nonprofit
organization that promotes the interests of residential telecommunications
customers. Their stories cited in the report come from a compilation of
more than 4,000 first-person narratives about spam that were solicited
since September of 2002. As part of a campaign to fight unsolicited
commercial email, TRAC invited Internet users to submit stories about their
personal experiences with spam.
For the full report: http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=102
Tags: digital divide
