Twenty nine percent of Internet users have purchased goods from spam emails, according to recent research by online security company Marshal.
The most commonly purchased items include sexual enhancement pills, software, adult material and luxury items such as watches, jewelry and clothing, according to the UK-based firm.
Also, the proportion of spam purchases has risen when compared to a similar Forrester Research poll from 2004, which surveyed 6,000 active Web users and reported 20% had made purchases from spam, according to Marshall.
“The poll highlights an inconvenient truth,” said Marshal’s vice president of products, Bradley Anstis, in a statement. “Many of us often question ourselves, why is there so much spam? The answer is, enough people are purchasing products from spam to make it a worthwhile and profitable endeavour for spammers.”
Though spam is known to have minuscule response rates, most of the messages ar blocked by filters, Anstis noted.
“This means the actual response rates are much higher if you only count those emails that make it into a person’s inbox,” he said.
Marshal’s mid-year Internet security report, compiled by its TRACE (Threat Research and Content Engineering) security team, indicates that global spam volumes doubled for the year ending June 2008.
The company attributed the rise largely to botnets, or networks comprised of thousands of infected personal computers, controlled remotely by criminals.
“They have enabled spammers to push down their costs through economies of scale and eliminated the need for spammers to host their own spam servers as they simply take control of other people’s computers instead,” the company said in a published statement. “Recent FBI prosecutions of bot-herders and investigations of message-boards used by spammers, suggests the going rate for spammers to send a million spam messages is as little as $5 - $10.”
According to Marshal, its research indicates that just five botnets account for 80% of the world’s spam.
Marshal’s poll also indicated that the number of respondents who admitted to making a purchase through spam have made multiple purchases; on average, more than two different types of purchase per person, supporting the conclusion that those who buy from spam make a habit of it, the company said.
