Each Brit Gets Over 10 Spam Messages a Day…

A new study carried out by moneysupermarket.com, the price comparison website, has shown that the average Brit receives over 10 spam messages a day or 372 spam messages a month by either email or text. The online poll was carried out by Opinium Research, a service orientated online market research agency and research consultancy. This company interviewed 2,179 British adults between 17th and 21st of October, 2008. So, what did this research show? What are its results?

It's interesting and rather strange but the survey revealed that nine out of 10 (90 percent) adults do not protect themselves against spam by automatically filtering their emails, leaving them open to potentially dangerous messages.

Commercial manager of mobiles and broadband at moneysupermarket.com, James Parker, noted that "with the internet and mobile phones playing such an integral part in everyday life, the opportunity for spammers to attack is huge. I'm really surprised just 10 percent of people use an automatic spam filter. Most email providers offer this for free and when you consider spam emails can contain viruses that will steal your private information; the need for security is paramount."

The research has also revealed that 81 percent of received messages are a nuisance and the most common types of spam messages are:

• Sales (35 percent);
• Phishing (27 percent); and
• Pornography (16 percent).

Even more terrifying is the fact that one in seven (or 14 percent) people admit to acting on, or replying to, a spam message. The under-twenties seem to be the worst offenders with nearly a fifth (17 percent) admitting to acting on spam.

Finally, the survey revealed that 26 percent of people think spam is a danger to young people in particular and another 23 percent think their email account provider should do more to warn of the dangers of spam - especially when 20 percent of people that receive spam have no idea how to stop it.