Getting Used to Spam

Technology News reported We're not any less annoyed by spam. We're just more accepting of it. So says a study released Sunday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Fifty-three percent of adult e-mail users in the United States now say they trust e-mail less because of spam, down from 62 percent a year ago and about the same as a June 2003 Pew survey.

Pew also found that 22 percent of e-mail users say they are spending less time on e-mail because of spam, down from 29 percent last year. In 2003, it was 25 percent.

"This shows some level of tolerance that people are manifesting," said Deborah Fallows, a senior research fellow at Pew and the study's author. "Maybe it's their getting used to it. Maybe it's like other annoying things in life -- air pollution, traffic -- they are just learning to live with it."

Other news organizations varied in how they reported this study

• Spam: You just don't care
• Spam, an Acquired Taste
• Spam still annoys, but we're used to it
• Spam hatred subsides -- it's just part of life
• US net users more accepting of spam

It is not easy to write a headline for this subject, but I don't think any of these capture the real feelings of most computer users. Just think how big a story it was when Spammer got a nine year prison sentance. Many ISPs have developed systems for deleting a lot of spam, and many users have also installed their own software to do it. In my case, I have installed Spam Inspector, and the combination of it and what my ISP (Cox) has done, plus my use of filters in Outlook Express to send message from people I communicate with frequently into special folders for the subjects they usually email me about, has lowered my spam to 20 or 30 messages a day that get past all three systems, and I have learned how to deal with them, and I usually only am fooled into reading at most one or two spam messages a day.

I certainly care about spam, I am not used to it, nor do I accept it, but like other problems in life, I deal with it.