Slashdot Mirror
Millions Continue To Click On Spam
An anonymous reader writes "Even though over 80% of email users are aware of the existence of bots, tens of millions respond to spam in ways that could leave them vulnerable to a malware infection, according to a Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) survey. In the survey, half of users said they had opened spam, clicked on a link in spam, opened a spam attachment, replied or forwarded it — activities that leave consumers susceptible to fraud, phishing, identity theft, and infection. While most consumers said they were aware of the existence of bots, only one-third believed they were vulnerable to an infection."
Users are ignorant to computers. Users have always been ignorant. We can do whatever we can to protect them, either through education, security, antivirus, and anti-malware, but the problem is they aren't geeky tech-people that keep us and like this stuff enough to learn it.
How about we just have a TV show or a movie they want to watch, but teaches them? We could make it a romantic comedy for the ladies or a war movie for the guys, but insert in proper computer use and warnings about spam, viruses, phishing, fraud, etc. We need some kind of mass media to actually teach the masses, and it needs to be a regular interval to keep up with the problems.
Why not force users to copy/paste a URL if they really want to see the webpage their "friend" sent them?