Not Much Spam At Work

from the so-they-say dept

The latest study out of the folks at the Pew Internet & American Life Project (who seem to release the results of a new study every other week or so) is that, despite all the talk about how spam is swamping our inboxes... it's mostly swamping personal email boxes. Work email has remained blissfully free of most spam, according to the (somewhat) surprising findings. If you think about it, though, this is less surprising. Generally speaking, you're less likely to put your work email address somewhere where it's likely to get picked up by spammers. People usually don't use it to post to newsgroups, boards or mailing lists (unless in a professional capacity). People don't use their work email address when they sign up for things that are likely to sell lists to spammers. Also, personal email address like those at Yahoo and AOL are more likely to be sold by Yahoo or AOL themselves to marketers. Finally, employers are much more likely to use anti-spam filters to block out spam in the first place.
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  • identicon
    COD, 9 Dec 2002 @ 6:56am

    No Subject Given

    Another thing - your work email address tends to change frequently, whether from job changes or mail system changes at an existing job.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2002 @ 2:55pm

      Re: No Subject Given

      No. I've had the same work address for five years. I've never received a piece of spam on it.

      I use my work account almost exclusively when I buy things over the internet since, I'm most likely to check my work email.

      People that complain about spam are either too stupid or too lazy to configure a good filter, plain and simple.

      I'd like to think I'm too lazy, since I receive lots of spam on personal accounts, but since I haven't even tried to put up a filter, maybe I'm just stupid.

      link to this | view in chronology ]


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