Email Users Learning to Live with Spam

Spam remains the bane of the internet, but U.S. email users are apparently less bothered by it even as they report the highest volume of spam ever - perhaps because they have grown more sophisticated in dealing with it - according to a new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, MarketingCharts reports.

Some key findings from Pew’s report:

• Some 37% of email users surveyed said spam had increased in their personal email accounts, compared with 28% who said so two years ago, and 24% three years ago
• 29% of those who have a work email account said spam had increased in those accounts, compared with 21% two years ago and 18% three years ago.
• Only 18%, however, say spam is a big problem, compared with 25% in June 2003.
• Nearly 3 of 10 (28%) say spam is not a problem, up from 16% four years ago
• Half (51%) say spam is annoying but not a big problem, compared with 57% in 2003.
• Those with both work and personal accounts are more annoyed with spam than those with only one type of account.

The volume of most offensive of spam - porn - has decreased, and users are becoming more sophisticated about handling spam, according to Pew:

• Three times more respondents said porn spam bothered them more than any other kind of spam.
• Half (52%) of email users report receiving pornographic spam, compared with 63% two years ago and 71% three years ago.
• Fewer women (46%) than men (58%) say they received porn spam.
• About two-thirds (68%) say they only rarely open a spam message because they didn’t realize it was spam; 27% say they do so sometimes; 5% say they do so often.

MarketingCharts offers up some more tasty spam tidbits.