Policies Towards Spamming
Notes:
- For the Seventh Survey, we added the new response choice of creating a blacklist. While this addition makes comparison between the Sixth Survey and the Seventh Survey for the questions problematic, it helps clarify the popularity of different solutions.
- From this and the Sixth Survey, users make very clear that they do not like to receive mass emailings, i.e.,
be spammed, but what do they propose to do about it? The most popular solution is an opt-out system where a registry would contain the addresses of people who do not wish to receive mass emailings (38.60%). This is similar to
the system already in place in the US that exists to remove people from junk postal mailing lists. 13.77% responded in support of imposing an 'impact' fee on the agencies sending the mail. Exactly what this impact fee would be or how it would be implemented was not specified in the question. Somewhat surprisingly, only 8.18% voted in favor of government regulation making spamming illegal. These findings suggest that the online community favors the
co-existence of users and spammers, but with users having more control.
- European users support the use of blacklists more than their US counterparts (28.27% Europe vs. 18.07% US) while being less likely to support the use of a registry (24.30% Europe vs. 40.20% US). Women and the elder generation were more in favor of an opt-out registry than their counter-parts (47.6% female vs. 34.41% male and 46.88% 50+ vs. 33.40% 19-25).
Table of Data for All Categories
| Policies Towards Spamming |
All |
Male |
Female |
USA |
Europe |
19-25 |
26-50 |
50+ |
| Blacklist |
2671.00 19.06% |
1919.00 20.25% |
735.00 16.66% |
2023.00 18.07% |
257.00 28.27% |
562.00 22.35% |
1570.00 18.64% |
307.00 16.21% |
| Don't Know |
783.00 5.59% |
449.00 4.74% |
324.00 7.34% |
616.00 5.50% |
51.00 5.61% |
120.00 4.77% |
439.00 5.21% |
129.00 6.81% |
| Government Controls |
1146.00 8.18% |
915.00 9.65% |
220.00 4.99% |
873.00 7.80% |
104.00 11.44% |
228.00 9.07% |
680.00 8.07% |
110.00 5.81% |
| Impact Fee |
1930.00 13.77% |
1370.00 14.45% |
543.00 12.31% |
1599.00 14.28% |
99.00 10.89% |
353.00 14.04% |
1213.00 14.40% |
195.00 10.30% |
| Nothing |
892.00 6.37% |
661.00 6.97% |
220.00 4.99% |
664.00 5.93% |
64.00 7.04% |
172.00 6.84% |
473.00 5.62% |
153.00 8.08% |
| Other |
1182.00 8.43% |
903.00 9.53% |
270.00 6.12% |
921.00 8.22% |
104.00 11.44% |
240.00 9.54% |
731.00 8.68% |
112.00 5.91% |
| Registry |
5410.00 38.60% |
3261.00 34.41% |
2100.00 47.60% |
4502.00 40.20% |
230.00 25.30% |
840.00 33.40% |
3316.00 39.37% |
888.00 46.88% |
For more information or to submit comments:
send e-mail to www-survey@cc.gatech.edu.
GVU's WWW Surveying Team
Graphics, Visualization, & Usability Center
College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-0280