Avira Survey Finds Email Spam Not The Problem It Once Was

Melisa LaBancz-Bleasdale — Fri, 27 May 2011 05:45:10 +0000

Germany-based Avira, found in recently conducted surveys of its customers that email spam is still an everyday occurrence, but not the nuisance it once was. 45% of all end-users said they were satisfied with the anti-spam filters on their PCs and laptops, and nearly 20% relied solely on the filters in place at their Internet Service Provider (ISPs). 72% of users reported receiving fewer than 10 spam emails per day, 18% reported 25 or more per day, and 6% reported over 100 per day.

The survey questions were presented to over 2300 of Avira’s worldwide customers during the months of March and April, 2011.

“The Spam landscape has clearly changed in the last two years with the take down of a couple of major botnets,” said Sorin Mustaca, data security expert at Avira GmbH. “Considering the fact that almost all email providers have a form of spam filtering installed on their servers, end-users receive only what the anti-spam solutions on the servers don’t catch. What really surprised me was that 45% of the users answered that they have an anti-spam solution on their computers and that they are satisfied with it. Overall, there is clearly work to be done within the security industry to get rid of 100% of all spam emails, but progress is being made.”

The larger security challenges today include fighting web-based Trojans and spyware that harvest credit card numbers and personal identity information. “But I still don’t recommend anyone clicking open spam emails, as many of them are linked to malicious websites. It’s always best to stay safe from unknown links and emails“, said Mustaca.

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Avira Survey Finds Email Spam Not The Problem It Once Was