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HARRIS
POLL - August 2003 by Humphrey Taylor
Public pressure to curb mass spamming with unsolicited emails (which often try to sell pornography, loans, prescription drugs, investments and real estate) continues to mount. In a new Harris Poll of adults who are online, fully 79 percent now favor making mass-spamming illegal and only 10 percent oppose doing so. Given the amount of spam this should come as no surprise. On average people online estimate that they receive more than 40 emails a day, including those at home, work or at other locations, and that 40 percent of these emails are spam. These are the results of two Harris Polls, one conducted online between May 19-27, 2003 with a nationwide cross section of 3,462 adults who are online, and the other with a nationwide sample of 655 online adults surveyed by telephone between June 10-15, 2003.
Online Methodology: The Harris Poll was conducted online within the United States between May 19 and 27, 2003 among a nationwide cross section of 3,462 adults. Figures for age, sex, race, education and number of adults in the household were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. “Propensity score” weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.
Humphrey Taylor
is the chairman of The Harris Poll, Harris Interactive. |
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Copyright 1996-2003, by Kentucky Business Online. All rights reserved. Editorial content
is copyright 2003, Lane Communications Group The Lane Report is a trademark of Lane Communications Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
Spammed Again
The
types of email that annoy the most people are pornography (86 percent),
mortgages and loans (71 percent), prescription drugs such as Viagra
(60 percent), and investments (59 percent). Many, but fewer people,
are annoyed by spams selling real estate (51 percent), software (36
percent) and computer and other hardware (31 percent).
Some
of these questions were asked in a previous Harris Poll and the trends
are, in one sense, a bit of a paradox. Those who favor making spamming
illegal have increased (from 74 percent last December to 79 percent
now). But those who find spamming very annoying have declined from 80
percent last year to 64 percent now, and somewhat fewer people (but
still substantial majorities) are annoyed a lot by the main types of
spam. This suggests that while people may have become more efficient
at identifying and deleting spam, this has not in any way reduced their
desire to eliminate or reduce it.
Two
technical points are worth noting. Some experts have argued that making
spamming illegal would not work, and the spammers would move offshore
where they could not be prosecuted. The second point relates to the
capacity of the Internet system. This survey suggests that if spam could
be greatly reduced below its current level (40 percent of all emails
in this research), this would free up a huge amount of space for other
more desirable Internet traffic.
Telephone
Methodology: The Harris Poll® was conducted by telephone within
the United States between June 10 and 15, 2003 among a nationwide sample
of 655 adults who are online. Figures for age, sex, race, education,
number of adults and number of voice/telephone lines in the household
were weighted where necessary to align them with their actual proportions
in the population.