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How the Spam Industry is Sustained

Posted by samzenpus on from the please-stop-clicking dept.

mOoZik writes "The BBC has an interesting article about spam and why it's still around. According to a survey, nearly 1/3 of users have clicked on spam messages and 1/10 have bought products advertised therein. "If no-one responded to junk e-mail and didn't buy products sold in this way, then spam would be as extinct as the dinosaurs.""

4 of 371 comments (clear)

  1. 1 in 10? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's an average right? Because I can't see how 10% of people have bought stuff from spam. I think that guy who likes buying spam stuff is driving the average up.

  2. Would you like to take a survey? by MykeBNY · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That should really be one third of people who choose to respond to telephone calls to answer surveys. I think that is a substantial skew in their results right there.

  3. Most users just aren't very smart by rjsquire · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've recently taken a job at a small software company and occcasionally I have to take a support call or two. We deal with school districts and our software is used primarily by special education administrators.
    These are people with multiple master's degrees and I'm amazed every day by their lack of techno-savvy. If very bright highly educated people don't recognize pop-up windows as advertisements then how can we expect the "average" person to recognize the bigger issue surrounding spam?
    I think the fact is that most people really don't care that much. They just accept spam the same way they accept junk snail-mail.

  4. Questionable Survey by The+Amazing+Fish+Boy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have to wonder how the survey question was phrased.

    If it gave an accurate and easily understandable description of SPAM (e.g. "email from someone you had not contacted in any way or did not know how they got your email address"), it would be fine.

    But I have a feeling (having taken a few surveys in my day) that it was something more along the lines of "How many times in the past year did you buy a product after receiving an email about the product?"

    The problem there is that it covers legitimate email offers, like from Amazon, ThinkGeek, or whatever. People might even have thought it counted when they were emailed a confirmation for their purchase.

    I wish these articles would include a link to the survey.