The Spam Crisis is Over (continued)

I’ve blogged this in the past and people have commented that they think otherwise.

Well now we have some consumer research on the subject, courtesy of Roper and my portfolio company Bigfoot Interactive.

Here are the highlights of that research:

• Majority of consumers say spam volume has decreased
  – 57% of consumers strongly/somewhat agreed that the amount of spam
  they have received over the past year has decreased, while 39%
  strongly/somewhat disagreed and 4% had no response/don’t know.
• Majority of consumers say they receive more relevant communications today than they did one year ago
  – 57% indicated that the emails they received from companies they do
  business with are more targeted than the same communications they got
  from those same companies a year ago. 35% strongly/somewhat disagreed
  and 8% had no response/don’t know.
• Phishing attacks difficult to recognize
  – 34% of consumers strongly/somewhat agreed they have received a
  fraudulent or phishing email that was disguised as a legitimate email
  asking them to verify personal information. In addition, just 32% of
  consumers strongly agreed they were confident they could identify or
  detect a fraudulent, "phishing" email that was designed to look like
  those of legitimate businesses, financial institutions and government
  agencies.
• Anti-spam software use high – 65% of consumers strongly/somewhat agreed they currently use anti-spam filtering or challenge response software.
• False positives persist – 25% of
  consumers indicated they have recently lost or did not receive an email
  that they were supposed to receive from a trusted source and 32% say
  that email they have requested from a trusted source was delivered to a
  junk mail folder. In addition, 52% of consumers strong/somewhat agreed
  they routinely check their spam/junk folder for legitimate messages.
• Security concerns pervasive – 82% of
  consumers say they are concerned about spyware as it relates to their
  online privacy, and 55% believe they have been infected with a spyware
  program.
• Consumers express interest in verification functionality from their ISP/Email provider
  – 89% indicate they would like their ISP/Email provider to include an
  icon to indicate email has been authenticated and is from a trusted
  source, and 86% of consumers strongly/somewhat agreed they would like
  their ISP/Email provider to include an unsubscribe option that would
  safely remove them from email lists.

So while the spam crisis is over, we have new crises to worry about.  Spyware and phising seem to be at the top of the list right now.