Is it Really That Big of a Problem? An Investigation into User Perceptions and Realities of Unsolicited Commercial E-mail

摘要

Amongst the Internet community today, there is a common taboo against companies using unsolicitedcommercial electronic mail to reach potential customers. This taboo exists for many reasons, including thefoundation of the Internet and the dubious nature of many companies and products who use unsolicitedcommercial e-mail, a.k.a. “Spam,” to reach potential customers. The purpose of this paper is to investigatethe real time and monetary costs of filtering spam from other personal and business e-mail as compared withanother form of mass advertising, bulk postal mail, a.k.a. “Junk Mail”. A pilot survey was completed withsubjects recording their time spent with junk mail and spam as opposed to their time spent with all postal mail(a.k.a. “snail mail”) and e-mail.