Super Spam Me Experiment

[Humpty]

In a unique experiment called Super Spam Me, 50 people from around the world surfed the web unprotected for a month, actively engaging with spammers and heading into the parts of the internet most of us avoid, to find out just how much spam they could attract and what the effect would be.

 

The results? Brits are amongst the most highly spammed people in the world, the most likely to be the targets of ?Nigerian scams? and the most likely after the US to receive spam of an adult nature. In just 30 days, the 50 global participants, received more than a hundred thousand spam messages, about 70 per day.

 

Participants in the experiment, organised by antivirus software manufacturers McAfee, found that spammers keep trying to find new ways to get us to part with our valuable contact information and cash.

 

Not all the trick messages people receive are ridiculous suggestions - such as winning millions in an international lottery you didn?t enter in the first place. Some of the most sophisticated spam messages are ?phising? e-mails that look entirely legitimate to the naked eye. These are messages in which fraudsters pose as a trustworthy source in order to obtain usernames, passwords and bank account details. The participants in the experiment received seemingly genuine e-mails from the likes of Chase.com, Bank of America, Wachovia.com and eBay, all of which turned out to be difficult-to-spot cons.

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