Spam? Not bovvered
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Spam on
I like to think that I am as on top of the spam situation as anyone else with a decent understanding of the technologies and strategies of both the spammer and the available solutions. I see relatively little real spam these days, thanks to decent server and client side filtering services doing their respective jobs respectfully well. These fully trained and tailored systems are efficient enough to ensure that false positives are all but extinct. Not that this stops me having to check my junk folders far more often than I’d like, simply to satisfy my paranoia that the statistical 1 in 1000 genuine emails to get classified wrongly will be sitting there costing me money in lost business.
And there lies the rub: spam still annoys the hell out of me even if it has all but vanished from my sight.
Unlike, it would appear, the average user of email according to a new survey from the highly respected Pew Internet research team. When asked about how spam impacted upon their online lives, 25% of people said it was a big problem back in 2003. This year that number has dropped down to just 18%. So despite the volume of spam increasing, the impact it has upon the recipient is diminishing. Could this be just because we are getting used to it, getting used to ignoring it as well, and accepting spam as part of the Internet experience?
Despite 71% of those asked using ISP or employer provided filters to block spam, the report suggests that 37% of people were receiving more of the stuff than ever before, up from 24% three years ago. Only 10% said they were getting less spam, although porno junk mail has declined from 71% then to 52% now. This, I believe, is the real reason that people are ‘not bovvered’ as much by spam. Whereas drug related or financial junk stays fairly constant, the drop in explicit sexual mail is matched by a drop in people saying spam is not as bigger a problem as it used to be when porn was more prevalent.
Another trend that I have been picking up upon, is for people overwhelmed by their inbox backlog to go ‘email bankrupt’ which is when someone deletes the entire content of their inbox and starts afresh with a clean slate. I don’t recommend it, but I can certainly see why increasing numbers are turning to it. Just as I can understand why a growing minority of business users are shunning email in favour of the telephone once more when it comes to corporate communication.
The bottom line, as far as I am concerned, is not so much that more people are finding spam less of a big problem, but rather that 55% of those surveyed no longer trust email as a medium because of it. Combine that with the whole email bankruptcy thing, and that ‘bovvers’ me a great deal.
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