Much of the spam sent over the Internet contains false or misleading information, the Federal Trade Commission found in a study released Tuesday.
In a random sample of 1,000 pieces of unsolicited commercial e-mail analyzed by FTC staffers, 66% contained false From lines, Subject lines or message text.
The study examined e-mail that was reported to the FTC or uncovered as spam by the agency. It is the first extensive review of the likely truth or falsity of claims appearing in unsolicited commercial e-mail, or spam, said an FTC statement.
Analysis of the From line revealed that 33% of the spam messages contained indicators of falsity. Nearly half of spam with false “From” information claimed to be from someone with a personal relationship with the recipient.
Usually by using just the recipient’s first name, “it looks like the sender is in the recipient’s address book,” said Eileen Harrington of the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection, who ran a press conference releasing the findings.
Other From line tricks, Harrington said, include disguising the identity of the sender in some way, like replacing the sender’s name with the recipient’s so it looks like the message bounced back. “I’m more likely to open that than if the From line is ‘Girls, girls, girls,’” Harrington said.
Senders falsified From lines for all types of offers, with finance and health offers being among the most prevalent.
Falsity in the Subject line was not as common as falsity in the From line: 22% of the sample spam study contained information that appeared to be false.
Of the spam containing misleading Subject lines, however, 42% misrepresented that the sender had a personal relationship with the recipient.
While false Subject lines were found in all types of offers, more than one-third of adult offers appeared to misrepresent the content of the message in the Subject line.
As for message text, approximately 40% of the spam messages reviewed had at least one indication of falsity.
The highest category for signs of falsity—90%–was business and investment advertisements. Other topics also generated a high percentage of falsity. They include health messages (48%) and leisure/travel messages (47%).
The FTC also studied whether the use of “ADV” in the subject line stopped spam. “ADV” is required by law in several states for commercial e-mail. The FTC found that only 2% of spam contains the “ADV” connotation.
“You’ve got to believe that spammers are spamming broadly to those states with those laws [but there is] woefully low compliance in the states that have passed those laws,” Harrington said.
A strong consumer concern that spammers will steal their identities, appears to be unfounded, Harrington said. Only 14 messages the FTC studied requested personal information.
The FTC released the study on the eve of a three-day spam forum it is hosting in Washington, D.C.
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