Spam News

MAAWG: Spam fools nearly one-third of email users

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Almost one-third of consumers admit responding to an email message they suspected was spam, according to a survey by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG), which the group said indicates a general lack of awareness of email-borne security threats.

That rate of response is much higher than reported by a more empirical study conducted by Cal-Berkeley researchers, which monitored 469 million spam emails sent by the Storm botnet.

But MAAWG, a coalition of major telecoms and network operators, said the survey nevertheless shows that users are "not necessarily as alert or cautious as they should be to proactively protect themselves against spam, online fraud and other email-related hazards."

The report, based on interviews with 800 non-expert computer users in the United States and Canada who used personal email addresses not managed by an IT department, could show web security firms how to target their solutions to consumers, MAAWG said.

Ferris Research, which conducted the study, said that network operators and security vendors should consider offering remote bot mitigation.

About 63 percent of those surveyed would allow their network operator or antivirus vendor to remotely access their computer to remove detected bots.