Spam is on the up

One thing about spam is certain. No one wants it. Yet, there are still differing opinions among business professionals on exactly what constitutes “spam” and how best to deal with it. 

SurfControl, a company that makes Web and e-mail filtering tools, recently commissioned a study to get a better understanding of how business users view spam.

Public Opinion Strategies conducted the survey and interviewed 535 business users from across the country. All of the respondents said that on average, the number of spam they have received since January has increased 21%.

The study found that 54% of users define spam as unsolicited, mass e-mail from a company that they’ve never done business with in the past. Unsolicited e-mail from a company that they have dealt with in the past is not considered spam according to 54% of respondents.

Specifically:

*93% of respondents say e-mail with a deceptive subject line that hides the sender’s intent is spam.

*82% say unsolicited mass e-mails, even those from legitimate companies, is also spam.

*78% even say unsolicited mass e-mails on subjects or offers that are of interest to them is still considered spam.

The majority of those surveyed (86%) also favor legislation that would outlaw spam that masks the sender’s identity or fraudulently misleads the recipient with a false subject line.

And of the 14% that oppose the government legislation to outlaw spam, 77% support their company’s use of filtering technology to reduce the amount of spam.

More users (41%) are bothered by the amount of spam they receive rather than content of the spam. Yet, 31% actually find the content more bothersome then the amount of spam.

Editor’s note: Want to know how you can fight back at spam? Throughout May and June, Network World will be on tour with SurfControl to discuss ways that enterprises can tame unsolicited Internet content. For more information of where you can catch the tour, please head to: https://www.nwfusion.com/events/surfcontrol/index.html