Have you ever looked at the amount of useless junk that you get in the spam folder of your e-mail account that tried to sell you cheap drugs, magical bedroom secrets and access to single women, and wondered why spammers would even bother with such lame attempts at marketing success that no one in their right mind would ever fall for? As it turns out, in studies done by professional industry groups, thousands of people in their right minds do actually see nothing wrong with clicking on an e-mail message that promises them magical personal enhancement, and then they are actually quite surprised when it turns out to be a virus or a scam. Who would have believed that the spammers were actually onto something in trusting in spam as a workable marketing tool? Studies show that half of all e-mail users admit to having clicked on spam at least once; one in three Internet users admits to entering into correspondence with a spammer, and about one in ten actually attempts to send money to a spammer to make a purchase.
This is not an insubstantial success rate that the spammers enjoy; for as long as people explore the opportunities and lures offered by spam messages, the spammers will have a reason to stay in business. Even one in ten Internet users attempting to buy something from a spammer puts enough money into this activity to make it worthwhile. There was an interesting experimental academic study done recently into the ways of the spammers; the researchers tried to get at the seriousness of the problem with their work. Researchers hijacked a spamming engine, a botnet, and had it work for them trying to sell an expensive and fictitious bedroom aid. The spam engine spewed out about half a billion spam messages in a month, and succeeded in getting a couple of dozen firm orders for this non-existent product. There are about a hundred times as many spam messages sent every month by the very spam engine used in the experiment; if this experiment is any kind of indication, there could be millions of dollars that the spammers rake in every year for their troubles. It would seem reasonable to believe then that people in this day and age would be a lot more aware of their surroundings; but if people are putting millions into the hands of spammers for no reason, perhaps we are due for a reappraisal of the way human society works.
An organization that works against spam and unsolicited messages on cell phones is a place you would expect to find well-educated users who could have excellent personal awareness of computer e-mail spam problems. But members of such a group are quite fallible too. In one such organization, a third of all members revealed themselves to be quite unaware of everyday precautions to take against spam, such as being sure never to enter one's e-mail address in an unverified website.
How exactly do the adequately-aware users protect themselves from spam? About two in three of all those who believe they know how to protect themselves from attacks, say that they can tell that a message is spam by reading the subject line or looking at the sender's name. About half of all users look for clues such as poor spelling, and about one in a hundred looks for hidden clues to the questionable nature of a message, such as the time it was sent. It would be easy to assume that the more technologically-aware the user is, the less likely he is to click on a malicious message. But the truth is, for the most part, the users who happen to click on spam are the ones who have too much time in front of their computers.
This is not an insubstantial success rate that the spammers enjoy; for as long as people explore the opportunities and lures offered by spam messages, the spammers will have a reason to stay in business. Even one in ten Internet users attempting to buy something from a spammer puts enough money into this activity to make it worthwhile. There was an interesting experimental academic study done recently into the ways of the spammers; the researchers tried to get at the seriousness of the problem with their work. Researchers hijacked a spamming engine, a botnet, and had it work for them trying to sell an expensive and fictitious bedroom aid. The spam engine spewed out about half a billion spam messages in a month, and succeeded in getting a couple of dozen firm orders for this non-existent product. There are about a hundred times as many spam messages sent every month by the very spam engine used in the experiment; if this experiment is any kind of indication, there could be millions of dollars that the spammers rake in every year for their troubles. It would seem reasonable to believe then that people in this day and age would be a lot more aware of their surroundings; but if people are putting millions into the hands of spammers for no reason, perhaps we are due for a reappraisal of the way human society works.
An organization that works against spam and unsolicited messages on cell phones is a place you would expect to find well-educated users who could have excellent personal awareness of computer e-mail spam problems. But members of such a group are quite fallible too. In one such organization, a third of all members revealed themselves to be quite unaware of everyday precautions to take against spam, such as being sure never to enter one's e-mail address in an unverified website.
How exactly do the adequately-aware users protect themselves from spam? About two in three of all those who believe they know how to protect themselves from attacks, say that they can tell that a message is spam by reading the subject line or looking at the sender's name. About half of all users look for clues such as poor spelling, and about one in a hundred looks for hidden clues to the questionable nature of a message, such as the time it was sent. It would be easy to assume that the more technologically-aware the user is, the less likely he is to click on a malicious message. But the truth is, for the most part, the users who happen to click on spam are the ones who have too much time in front of their computers.
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