* The Email Sender & Provider Coalition
In late March, the Email Sender & Provider Coalition (ESPC) announced the results of a survey into how e-mail users approach spam, what they would like to see in their e-mail clients and other issues surrounding e-mail use. Here are some highlights:
In late March, the Email Sender & Provider Coalition (ESPC) announced the results of a survey into how e-mail users approach spam, what they would like to see in their e-mail clients and other issues surrounding e-mail use. Here are some highlights:
* Users are fairly savvy when it comes to evaluating e-mail based on the ‘from’ and ‘subject’ lines: the vast majority of users determine whether a message is spam or not based on the content of these fields without actually opening the message.
* Almost all respondents to the survey wanted enhanced e-mail client functionality that would allow them to stop receiving specific e-mails via an ‘unsubscribe’ button built directly into their client. The vast majority would like a ‘report fraud’ button in their e-mail client, information from which should be shared with ISPs and others.
* E-mail users are very interested in reputation and similar services and would like e-mail senders to have their practices certified by independent organizations.
On one level, these results are very good news because they show that most e-mail users are quite knowledgeable about the potential threats that they face from spam, phishing, viruses, malware and other problems. The publicity that has surrounded these threats, coupled with efforts from the ESPC and others has gone a long way toward educating e-mail users about good e-mail practices.
However, technology is still going to be the primary method upon which organizations must rely to solve e-mail problems. For example, one e-mail user in 10,000 that buys something from a spammer is enough to keep spammers in business and their junk flowing into our mailboxes. One user in a 5,000-seat company that gets infected with a virus is enough to threaten an entire network. Add to this the increased potential for security threats imposed by unified communications, since vishing attempts will likely be even more successful than phishing has been.
In short, the ESPC has done a very good job and their survey results show that major gains have been made, but lots more still needs to be done.
