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The 'bad behaviour' of e-mail users is helping to sustain the spam industry, a new study has found.According to a survey conducted by security firm Mirapoint and market research company the Radicati Group, nearly a third of e-mail users have clicked on links in spam messages.
One in ten users have bought products advertised in junk mail.
The last line is the one that got my attention.
That's incredible! I remember reading a year or two ago that certain spammers were happy with a daily rate of 20-30 sales per million emails sent, but one in ten people online buying through spam is surely some mistake - or is it?
Syzygy
junk mail.
So what's their definition of junk mail? This is one of the big problems with studies on spam. There are about 2000 different definitions for what constitutes spam. If I had to guess, these guys defined it as any commercial email, opt-in or not.
Syzygy
One in ten users have bought products advertised in junk mail.
I have to disagree with teh source on this one. There is no way that is the "average". Think about it, why even start a web site. Just send spam with affiliate links. This contradicts every "average" I have ever read on the subject.
Take care,
Brian
One in ten users have bought products advertised in junk mail.
I bet some users (especially new users) think that the spam came with their email package and feel they have to buy to keep the hoster's respect or are oblivious to spam itself!
//Partly Entertaining\\
Matthew
The article said one in ten users have purchased products advertised through junk/spam mail - not that one in ten spam emails garners a sale.
Assuming roughly 700 million internet users worldwide, and that probably most of them have email... and consequently that most if not all of those with email have received spam. Assuming the vast majority of those who have used the Internet are still using it (they haven't died or become bored), that means that there have probably been somewhere in the range of 50-60 million suckers ever. Lets raise that number to 80 million to account for repeat buyers.
Assuming the average purchase price of a piece of spam merchandise is in the range of ~$50 USD, that means there has been a total, ever, of roughly $4 billion revenue from spam emails. What's that, a month in Iraq? But when you consider that the cost of sending a spam email is essentially $0.00, and that the production cost of the crap being sold is essentially zero as well, that's a pretty good ROI. Hmm... maybe I'm in the wrong business.
Of course, the numbers used here are completely accurate and the methods used are nothing but scientific.
