Porn spam—memorably described as “urinating in the well we all drink from,” by First Amendment/adult Internet attorney J.D. Obenberger in 2003—has become less of a problem in the overall spam picture, according to a new survey, “CAN SPAM A Year Later,” from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit research center reports that 63 percent of those surveyed said they have received no porn spam at all (an 8 percent drop) in the year since the federal CAN-SPAM law went into effect, while 29 percent say they get less porn spam. Sixteen percent of those surveyed, however, said that they get more.
In contrast to porn-specific spam figures, Pew reports that Americans are getting more spam overall—but minding it less, apparently.
While more than half of the American e-mail users studied for the latest report say spam remains a big problem, Pew determined that 28 percent of personal e-mail users say they get more spam than a year ago; 21 percent with work e-mail accounts say they get more spam; and 53 percent of all e-mail users say spam makes them less trusting in e-mail—compared to 62 percent a year earlier, according to Pew senior research analyst Deborah Fallows.
“If anything, [e-mail users] have been a little less likely to practice good habits,” Fallows says. “In June 2003, 69 percent of users say they would avoid posting their email addresses to websites, a common source for spammers to collect email addresses. Now, 64 percent say so. The number of users who avoid giving out their email addressees or who set up additional addresses for times they might attract spam remained virtually the same.
She continues, however, that, “There is one change that suggests more e-mail users are taking the initiative: In June, 2003, 14 percent of users said they had set up unusual e-mail addresses, which are harder for random name-generating spam software to match. That has increased now to 19 percent.”
Despite evidence of such efforts, Fallows said that overall, there is very little evidence that e-mailers have learned more about helping themselves fight spam and have changed their spam-avoidance doings very little in the past year and a half. She said Pew researchers determined that 57 percent of e-mailers contacted in June 2003 had “heard ‘some’ or ‘a lot’ about spam,” but by January of this year, the number was barely higher, at 60 percent.
Moreover, the report continued, 22 percent of all e-mailers studied say spam has cut their overall e-mail use, compared to 29 percent a year earlier. Sixty-seven percent say spam makes cyberspace unpleasant or annoying, compared to 77 percent a year earlier.
Pew also reported a rise in phishing–spam deceiving users into giving up sensitive personal and financial information–asking for the first time whether respondents ever received e-mail asking for personal financial information. About 35 percent said yes, and 2 percent of those admitted that they’d responded to such messages and had provided the personal information requested.
The survey also showed changes in how people actually define spam. In mid-2003, for example, 92 percent of e-mail users surveyed considered commercial mail they didn’t solicit from people they didn’t know to be spam, but the figure now hits 87 percent. At the same point in 2003, 74 percent said that they considered political or advocacy mail to be spam, but now the figure is 66 percent, Pew said.
The current survey was based on 2,201 e-mail-using adults 18 and older responding to Pew questioners between January 13 and February 9 of this year.
A year ago, Pew determined CAN-SPAM–which took effect in January 2004–was already doing little if anything to arrest spam, while other CAN-SPAM critics have since said the results so far show the law accomplished just what they predicted: nothing substantial, particularly so long as the law does not include the opt-in factor and depends instead upon opt-out, which still allows spam mailers to send their wares at least once.
