They’re talking 10 full workdays over the course of a year, or a few ticks north of a minute-and-a-half every blessed hour. That’s how much time the typical e-mail user – emphasis on typical – spends dealing with spam.
So say researchers at Stanford University, whose report on how Americans use the Internet has been cited in a number of recent press reports, most prominently on the front page of last Tuesday’s New York Times.
Call me skeptical . . . highly so. The only way “typical” e-mail users spend that much time shoveling spam is if they’re reading and answering a bunch of it. (“Dear Sir: While I appreciate the gravity of your problem with those unreasonable Nigerian banking authorities, and I am overwhelmed by the generosity of your offer to compensate me for any assistance I might lend, please be advised that all of my funds are currently tied up with the PayPal service department and I am unable to help at this time. Sincerely, Your Friend in America.”)
But before we get too deep into questioning the Stanford conclusions – and stacking them up against a second such report from the University of Maryland – permit me to emphasize what ought to be obvious: None of this is meant to lend comfort to the enemy, that is, spammers who have argued for years that those who don’t want their junk should simply hit “delete.” That will be a bogus defense as long as spam continues to account for three-quarters of the mail stream (give or take a tributary) and network professionals and their employers have to pay the price in time, money and aggravation.
Today,we’re talking only about the burden of spam on end users.
Generalizing from personal experience is generally a bad idea, but not always. Personally, I don’t spend a minute-and-a-half a day dealing with spam, never mind a minute-and-a-half every hour, as the Stanford study suggests is typical. Through the diligence of the Network World IT department and the checks my company writes to an anti-spam vendor, the volume of junk hitting my in-box has dwindled to a trickle – about a dozen per day, two at the most. Ridding it in the morning takes less time than booting up Windows. The situation at home is even rosier.
What might account for the chasm between the Stanford data and my understanding?
“It’s possible that people may have a tendency to exaggerate,” says Lu Zheng, one of the Stanford researchers. “Nevertheless, there are several reasons that make average Internet users spend more time dealing with spam than in your case.”
“First, not everyone is as sophisticated as you in spotting spam at a glance, especially when nowadays spam senders are also inventive in disguising spam.”
“Second, people may not have the same advanced spam filter in their home computer as they do at their workplace, and 60% of the online time is spent at home.”
“Lastly, we understand any estimation comes with error. The time-diary methodology we used is better in reducing errors than simply asking ‘How many minutes did you spend in dealing with spam yesterday?'”
“We included the latter question in the questionnaire, too, and the answers we got, as we expected, were much higher (21 minutes per day) than that from the time-diary questions.”
While I’m flattered to be called sophisticated and recognize an element of truth in each of Zheng’s points, I’m still not buying the conclusion.
Which brings us back to the University of Maryland. Researchers there say the typical e-mail user receives 18.5 pieces of spam daily and expends 2.8 minutes worth of effort cleaning it up.
Sounds about right.
