One in Six Consumers Act on Spam

The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working group (MAAWG) issued a report titled, "A Look at Consumers' Awareness of Email Security and Practices" (pdf).

MAAWG commissioned the study to gauge users' understanding of messaging threats and to identify how best to work with users in removing bots and viruses from infected systems. The report is based on 800 interviews with computer users in the United States and Canada who said they were not "security experts" and who used email addresses that were not managed by a professional IT department.

Some highlights from the report:

• 48% said that they have never clicked on a spam email
• 1/3 said that they were interested in the product or service being offered and admitted to responding to a message they knew was spam
• 17% said that they made a mistake when they responded
• 13% said they simply had no idea why they did it
• 6% wanted to see what would happen

Download the report here.

Comments

[Ian McCollum]

And I have bad math in my comment. Woops!

Try "Two in Six Consumers Act on Spam"

: )

[Ian McCollum]

Your post has some bad math in it.

"1/3 said that they were interested in the product or service being offered and admitted to responding to a message they knew was spam"

This bullet says the title should actually be "One in Six Consumers Act on Spam"

And "48% said that they have never clicked on a spam email" says that actually 52% of consumers act on spam not 1/3 or 1/6.

Just sayin.

[Michael]

Good post, no matter how smart we think we are for spotting spam, once it awhile we fall for it. I think I fall into the 6& category because sometimes that product is so crazy, I need to see it for myself.