Student takes on the spammers

A Manchester student has gone where no internet user wants to go – into the world of spam.
21-year-old Danni, who describes herself as a heavy user of the internet , was one of a team of five UK volunteers to take part in a global S.P.A.M (Spammed Persistently All Month) Experiment, in which fifty people from around the world surfed the web unprotected for 30 days.
The results are published today and show that most Spam is sent to carry advertising while financial spamming is on the increase.
Danni first became aware of the issue when she noticed more and more spam on her Facebook site and was intrigued to learn more about it.
She said: “I have learnt that you can’t trust anyone on the Internet. Spam creates a vicious circle of which, as consumers, we can gain no relief. I cannot believe that spammers encourage us to give over personal details by recalling a story of a girl who had no family or money in Africa. I think it’s sad that the spammers have got to the point where such messages are produced.”
During the experiment, the participants from ten countries received more than 104,000 spam emails, that’s 2,096 messages each, the equivalent of approximately 70 messages a day.
Participants from the UK received the fifth highest number of spam attracting 11,965 messages in total; 1,149 of them in the first week, the third highest first week spam count across the globe.
One UK participant, software developer Simon, received 5,414 spam emails – the fourth highest number of all the participants.
The results reveal residents in the UK are most likely to be targeted by the infamous ‘Nigerian’ spam emails – where someone supposedly from Nigeria contacts their target to let them know they are a beneficiary of a long lost relatives’ will in a bid to extract money from them. Participants in the UK received 23% of the global total of these emails. The UK participants also attracted a high level of spam of an ‘adult’ nature, coming second only to US with 18% of the emails received.
One of McAfee’s goals of the experiment was to highlight that spam is not only a nuisance but it also poses a very real threat and is showing no signs of slowing down.
Read Danni’s blog of the experience here.