Survey: Net Users Tolerate Junk E-mail
April 15, 2005 — -- In this week's "Cybershake," we take a look at what the latest survey reveals about Net users' attitudes regarding junk e-mail. Plus, we note that the Web is still abuzz over the passing of Pope John Paul II, as well as speculation on who will be the next leader of the Catholic Church.
It's been more than a year since the CAN-SPAM Act became law. But whether legislation against unsolicited commercial e-mail -- colloquially known as "spam" -- has been effective is still debatable.
Last week, Jeremy Jaynes, 30, was sentenced to nine years in prison for bombarding the Internet with an estimated 10 million pieces of spam a day. Considered one of the top 10 spammers globally, Jaynes was convicted last November in Virginia under a state law that prohibits unsolicited bulk e-mail under a falsified account.
But according to the latest report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, an arm of the nonprofit Pew Research Center in Washington, spamming certainly hasn't gone away.
In a telephone survey of 1,421 adult Internet users in the United States, 28 percent of respondents with a personal e-mail account reported getting more spam than a year ago. Only 22 percent said they were getting less junk in their inboxes. Of those with work e-mail accounts, 21 percent said they received more spam while only 16 percent said less.
Overall, 52 percent of those surveyed said spam was still a "big problem." Only 45 percent said that of pop-up ads on Web pages.
"We found that people said they were in fact getting a little bit more spam than they were [did] a year ago," said Deborah Fallows, a senior research fellow at the Pew Project. "But it didn't seem to be troubling them as much as it did a year ago."
Fallows said when compared to results from a similar Pew survey conducted in February 2004, the current survey shows e-mail users' attitudes about spam have changed. Some indicators:
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