Spam works on 11% of computer users
It's no wonder there's spam, and lots of it. According to a survey released Tuesday, 11 percent of computer users have bought something touted by spam, and 9 percent have been ripped off by spam scams.
The poll, jointly conducted by Mirapoint, a message security vendor, and the Radicati Group, a research firm that specializes in e-mail messaging issues, found a surprising fraction of computer users actually open spam, buy its products, and get suckered into its bogus schemes.
Even if they're not purchasing spammed products, nearly 4 in 10 users (39 percent) admitted to clicking on the embedded URLs within spam. More distressing is that 57 percent of those polled who said they clicked on links also said they received more spam after they did. Relating cause and effect, it seems, is a dying art.
"If people stopped buying products from spam, spam would probably go away," said Marcel Nienhuis, an analyst at the Radicati Group.
