Slashdot Mirror
Study on the Effects of Spam on End Users
An anonymous reader writes "'About a third of people responded to a spam, seeking more information. And 7 percent actually bought a product or service.' Who are these people? Is this really what non-techies do with Spam? They can have my Spam if they want it :-)"
One problem is people ignoring email that isn't spam, simply because the subject line looks like it it. It may change the way subject lines are written. In the end, I think email will be like IM, you'll have to 'approve' what email you'll accept, like you have to 'approve' additions to your buddy list now. This will take away much of the openness and functionality of email, so I hope it doesn't come to that.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
With a sample size that small, I'm amazed they got any information from that study.
an intelligent person who bought something off a spam. These are the same people who are getting herbal viagra while dreaming of a larger penis while writing up their resignation since they'll get so much money from that nice Nigerian man.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
until these numbers drop, spam will continue to push it's way into our email boxes...
but, there is hope, you can only enlarge your penis so many times.
Runnin' On Empty
They're your friends, family and/or neighbors. In short, they are people who view a computer as merely a tool, not a hobby or profession. It would be interesting to run this every year and study trends. I expect that Joe & Mary Sixpack are becoming more aware of spam very quickly.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Hopefully we'll soon be able to study the effects of legal measures on spammers. :)
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
I work as tech support at a university. It is my experience that most people actually read spam messages and then actively consider the promotion. I guess they are still naive to the ways of the internet and believe they are actually seeing a good deal sent to them. People always ask me about the "send your bank account info to nigeria" scam because they don't ever think that *they* could be the target of a scam. I'm afraid to think of what kinds of scams these people fall for in the real world if they believe everything they read on their computer screen.
Am I reading the same report?
For this report, we collected original data from two sources. The first was a national telephone survey of 2,200 adults, including 1,380 Internet users that we conducted during June 2003. The second was a compilation of more than 4,000 first-person narratives about spam that were solicited since September 2002 by the Telecommunications Research & Action Center (TRAC), a national consumer group.
It's been a while since college statistics, but I thought that in general, once you got to a sample size of 400, your results weren't going to get much better...??
My provider just installed it. : .
Now, the spam comes with a modified subject (beginning with *****SPAM*****) and a report such as
SPAM: . : . . : . : . . Start SpamAssassin results . : . . : . : .
SPAM: This mail is probably spam. The original message has been altered
SPAM: so you can recognise or block similar unwanted mail in future.
SPAM: See http://spamassassin.org/tag/ for more details.
SPAM:
SPAM: Content analysis details: (6.4 hits, 3 required)
SPAM: Hit! (2.7 points) Subject contains lots of white space
SPAM: Hit! (3.7 points) BODY: Information on getting a larger penis
SPAM:
SPAM: . : . . : . : . . End of SpamAssassin results . : . . : . : . .
Now, I'd suggest you ask your provider to install such a filter on his servers.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Oxman's 15-year-old son, Robert, says five out of six e-mails he gets daily are spam, often including offers of pornography or dating services. Robert says he simply deletes them.
Robert would neither comment on the delay between when he received the pornographic emails and when he deleted them, nor would he comment on his activities during that time.
I've got my Dad well trained... he usually blocks anything that's not from a user in his address book, and deletes anything with an attatchment that he was not expecting. He's not exactly a techie, but he's a lot more savvy than a lot of non-technical internet users
My mom on the other hand, still seems to believe that it's all personally directed at her, and that she should either respond, get angry/offended/whatever, just as if someone she knew in meatspace said/sent it to her. :-)
She's learning, now, but quite often she looks at stuff like those banner ads saying "Speed up your internet connection..." or "You have won..." and she's just not worked out yet that it's all lies. The worst are those emails which claim it's a new critical update from Microsoft. It took ages to convince her that Bill's Boys don't send out neccesary updates through email.
It's the folk who don't have a reality check in the form of a friendly techie around that I'm worried about. If not for me, my folks PC would be riddled with trojans, virii and other malicious software.
-- Soluzar
Sign the FSF's Anti-DMCA petit
A few years ago I had a rather nasty realization; as 100 is the mean IQ, that means fully one half of the population has an IQ below 100.
This realization has brought me peace. I'm no longer frustrated at the stupidity of the "average" person...they just can't help it.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
I'm rolling my own.
I'm setting up my own Email server (yes, paid the extra bucks to get a business broadband account), complete with filters, attachment blocking, etc. Even purchased and read a couple of books on the subject... it's proven to be quite an educational endeavor.
When my kids are old enough to use Email (pretty soon now), I want to provide them with something at least partially filtered by dear old dad... I' ve even saved about 2000 spam emails to help train the filters. I don't want to have the birds-and-the-bees conversation with my kids any earlier than I have to (and explaining some midgets-in-leather porno spam is NOT on my preferred activities list).
Doing something is so much better than just bitching, and so much more satisfying.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Take my Dad, for example. He's happy keeping in touch with his operatic society via their mailing list, and using email - you forget how big a "Wow!" moment you had when you first got your head around the whole idea of free global communications - but he's still printing out the latest "MS Security Patch" fakes and asking me if he needs to do anything with them.
He also keeps asking if there's anything I can do to stop the semi-porn spam - and other than the usual precautions, the answer is still "not really".
It may be natural to us old pros to just hit delete, but to people new to the technology it's not that straightforward.
People think it's polite to mail back saying "actually, I don't want this mail" rather than LARTing them to the ISP, looking up their address from WHOIS, burning down their house and sowing the ground with salt like we do (it's not just me doing this, is it?
Basically, there are always going to be enough people making enough mistakes whilst learning to keep spammers happy...
Mind you, anyone who buys a Penis Patch probably deserves all they get!
this report says that 33% of users have "clicked on a link" in order to find out more, sometime in their lives, and 7% of users have ordered something from a spam message at some point. (At least I interpreted the blurb to mean that some spam had a 7% return rate -- that's not the case.) I don't think that these numbers are really all that surprising. For a beginning internet user, spam may seem like no more than commercials on TV. It shouldn't be surprising that occasionally people get interested.
Much more interesting would be a survey of the last time they responded or bought something from spam, versus how long they have been using e-mail. You could draw more conclusions from that.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
You can not get around this fact: the average person is of average intelligence. Most of us know a lot about how to 'properly' use computers because this is either our hobby or job. But the average person has no idea. Our secretaries at work, for instance, haven't a clue about anything beyond click, type, drag.
Then there's just plain stupid people, who think that an anonymous advertisement in their email, with spelling mistakes, lots of exclamation marks, and garbage writing warrants a legitimate product or service. A fool and their money...
So you'll either have to require better training for all computer users, which probably won't happen. Or you'll have to revise the types of software that laypeople use to protect them from the world.
Don't confuse intelligence with knowledge.
/.'ers have had some mechanic laugh at them behind their back - "can you believe they agreed to pay an extra $200 to have their air filter replaced? They can't be very intelligent".
I'm sure a few very intelligent
Just because you know nothing about how much an airfilter costs doesn't mean you are stupid, and likewise with photoshop.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
No longer do you have to be rediculed because your sample size is too small! With our new, patented system you can increase your sample size GARANTEED! Just click here and impress those survey ladies at the mall with your new, bigger sample size!
Go to spamcop.net and click on "report spam". It parses the headers for you, sends the reports, and uses the report to build up a pattern of abuse. Doesn't charge for the reporting service. I use them to filter my personal email; they clean the inbox & deliver the contents to where I want it...that takes a subscription,but reporting is free.
I never hide my email when posting on forums or anywhere online.
Profile for Garak
Garak (100517)
(email not shown publicly)
Come again?
Our company maintains web sites for a number of clients. We frequently get clients forwarding us spam that they have received, saying things like "your web site is not optimized for search engines", "why aren't you in this great directory...?", "your web site would recieve a lot more visitors if...", asking us what we should do about it.
It can be a bit annoying, because of course clients don't understand these things are just spam sent out in their thousands, and think they are from real people criticising their web sites. Of course the standard Slashdot response is to laugh at such people for being dumb, but often this type of spam is created in a deliberately deceptive way to make it look as if it is from a real person.
Although the great internet boom of the late 90's is over, many newbies enter the Internet every day. These people have never used e-mail or browsers before and have no idea about what (not) to do on the 'net. I think these are the people that reply to spam, leave their names, adresses, crdit card numbers and what not everywhere and are in general the most vulnerable group on the 'net. Educating these people will not always work (as in real life), so there will always be people that reply to spam etc., and therefore sending spam will continue to be profitable.
-- Cheers!
I never know what I might find,
p am/01f ree_winner.shtml
on any day I go online.
I used to get in quite a huff,
while wading through unwanted stuff.
But then I changed the man I am,
the day I answered all my spam.
Now every time I check my box,
I load up on fantastic stocks.
I'll gladly say I felt no loss,
when, with a smile, I fired my boss.
With just one click, the best thing yet,
I freed myself of all my debt.
I have, paying a few small fees,
ten university degrees.
Now that I'm losing all this weight,
I'm sure, someday, I'll get a date.
Instead of going to a show,
I spy on everyone I know.
(That's easy, since I have in hand,
this nifty wireless video cam.)
I spend my evenings viewing screens,
of barely legal horny teens.
And with a little credit charge,
Whoopee! My penis was enlarged!
Meanwhile these shots of Britney Spears
should be enough to last for years.
And so I lead this online life,
my monitor is now my wife.
It has become my greatest dream,
to launch my own get-rich-quick scheme.
And if you think you might get missed,
relax, you're on my e-mail list.
SATIREWIRE'S 2ND ANNUAL POETRY SPAM
2001 FREESTYLE WINNER:
"I Answered All My Spam"
by Alex Silbajoris, Columbus, Ohio
http://www.satirewire.com/features/poetry_s
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The report is based on a randomized, national phone survey of 2,200 adults.
Now, I wonder why a survay carried out in this manner recorded an unusually high number of people responding to spam?
Maybe a truer responce would have been acheved if every time someone told them to fuck off and slammed the phone down they treated this as an 'I dont respond to spam' reply
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
I see this as more toothless-tiger feel-good legislation that politicians sign to get votes. I for one don't buy it for a second.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
The IQ scheme was set up assuming an approximately Gaussian distribution, for which the mean and median are the same. 15 IQ points = 1 standard deviation.
Naturally, that's horseshit, but 100 was at least designed to be the median and the mean, by definition.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
This is more than just sending off a single email to a scantly watched abuse email.. This means getting hold of a real person and explaining, realistisay, what sort of legal liabilities they might be open to if they continue to support the spammer's actions.
(Hacking laws, aiding and abetting, Trademark infringement and vicarious liability) often fit in there.
If more people would do this, life would get a lot harder for spammers.
I've yet to meet an intelligent person who bought something off a spam.
I've never seen anyone in the act of purchasing the National Enquirer either but obviously it must happen. Frequently.
Not sure if that's funny or depressing...
You've never paid by the byte for your data transfer, then, have you? I imagine you've also never paid for your storage space or paid by the minute for your connection time. Any of these things make spam suck much worse. Also, it really sucks if you get so much spam in your mailbox that your provider starts bouncing legitimate messages. These conditions (among others) can cause unwanted email to become costly rather than merely annoying.
Liar. You hide it when posting on slashdot.
.sig: file not found
I have this really crazy idea about how to kill spam: Prosecute people who buy from spam services...
I mean, it's the same thing with drugs: you prosecute those who sell, and those who consume.
If law enforcement starts sending bogus spam and getting those who respond, fewer people will respond, thus killing the profitability of it.
how long until
You never saw a fish on the wall with its mouth shut.
You separate into groups; the response group R, and the "Fuck off" group F. Say that F is 1000 people or so; you now take a subsample of F, say 20 people, and you harass them at all hours of the day until they give you a straight answer. You then assume that the 20 people you randomly chose to harass in this manner are representative of the entire 1000, and multiply the ratio accordingly.
Of course, most surveyors don't have the nerve to do the statistical analysis properly, and frankly I can't say I blame them.
Not at all, Tech Support will become a breeze. No emails coming in, and the response to any complaint: "We sent you an email about it, you *have* added our support email address to your whitelist haven't you? Oh you don't know how? We'll email you instructions."
I agree the figures sound high, but we are in statistics land..
1. People may receive mailings from a company they once did business with, offering them worthwhile products. But if they've forgotten about their original dealings, it will look like UCE.
2. Some (otherwise) reputable companies may get hold of a targetted mailing list and send spam that is actually not for sex aids and scams. I've seen a few 'honest' spams in my time.
3. People like me follow links in spams simply out of curiosity. If I get an unusually novel one, or one displaying new techniques in stealth, I often (carefully) investigate it.
-----
There is a large group of people with IQs of 100, so fewer than half are less than 100. In a normal distribution (bell curve) median, mean & mode are at the same point. IQ tests are constructed to fit the normal distribution, so for IQ tests:
100 is the most common value, or the Mode.
100 is the midpoint of the values, or Median.
100 is the average value or Mean.
If you're talking about something without a normal distribution, then extreme values on one side will drive the average down, but most of the population is above average.
In Lake Wobegone, "All the children are above average." Maybe they have a lot of terribly stupid adults, so that all the children can be above average. I knew something bothered me about that place.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
I have received over 100 messages in the last 24 hours. Less than a dozen made it through to me.
I had one request for passage of mail, which I accepted as I knew what it was about.
In the whole time I have used Earthlink's challenge system only two businesses have requested permission to be added to my link.
None of the big delivery or sales sites have asked, but I did add them as my daily summary of blocked "suspicious" mail was large.
Earthlink has two categories. know and suspected. it is from suspected that permissions can be asked about. their known spam category does not send out notifications of blocked mail
Getting my permission requires the user/company to follow a link and ask for it. It uses the standard picture challenge technique that some advanced systems can defeat.
In the end I love it, I no longer have to filter at my end. I also have cut down my spam to zero.
I have yet to experience a case of repeated requests. I know I can block them permanently, so unless they roll addresses all the time all they could be at most is a request hassle.
PS: This system is great for those who have grand parents who don't need to see that seedy side of the net. You can setup their address books for them and even review their spam online if they give you the passwords.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I guess we should stop trying to make laws to stop spam. If it were something like 5% of responded to a spam message and 0.01% actually bought something, I could see the argument for illegalizing it. However, a figure this high suggests that people actually want these offers (I haven't a clue why, either, so don't ask).
Maybe this is better as I would much rather have spam than DRM, and it appears spam has been used as one of the arguments in favor of locking down the Net.
I would rather suffer the inconvenience of freedom than the frustrated meaninglessness of life under tyranny.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
That seven percent number does sound incredibly high given that responses from direct mail campaigns generating less than half that are considered very successful. No wonder spammers are reluctant to withdraw, especially since the price of spamming is negligible when compared to the price of a direct mail ad.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Not true, there may be an increase in the short term, but then spammers will realize that they can't continue to spam and the case load will decrease. Washington and California state courts have not crashed because of spam cases.
Government agencies tend to move slowly and pick the cases for people who donate to campaigns or cases that they want to use to make a point. Look at the EEOC, it allows individuals to bring cases or they can bring cases themself.
If only a government agency can take action, the small time spammers will keep going thinking that they are too small for the government to take action.
Fight Spammers!
Sure, spam sucks and spammers should be castrated [or worse] but at least one person is having the last laugh at the spammers: http://www.thespamletters.com
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand". -Milton F.
The "Click to remove me" links are not all that effective. People tend to forget that the other way Spammers verify your email address is with HTML email containing foreign image tags.
E.g. <img src="http://10.0.0.9/images/9879287493?email=blah@ nothere.not">
The article says people are more annoyed with spam than door-to-door salespeople knocking on their front door. Or even unsolicited phone calls.
OK. People would rather put up with some poor yammering sod than hit "delete"?
Makes little sense to me.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
if you want to do anything useful with the information by understanding sub-sets or demographics of respondents, you need to increase the sample size.
You may have 400 total adults answering, but if you were trying to understand differences by gender [assume
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
I remember I got a spam from a company called Revolution Helicopters. I was so intrigued by the concept that I emailed them saying they really shouldn't spam but their product was interesting.
They emailed me back, saying the company will never do this again since the response was so hostile, and they had learned their lesson!
I was curious, so just now I did a search for the company. They are not in business anymore, but people are still using and maintaining the product.
So I have technically responded to a spam, but I never actually bought anything from one.
D