14 DAY TRIAL // Most Internet users receive spam emails every day, many of which are designed to distribute viruses, spyware, or other pieces of malware.
A recent study conducted by TNS Global on behalf of email security firm Halon shows that close to 95% of Americans have received at least one malicious email.
Of them, 8.8% have opened a malicious attachment that led to their computer becoming infected. 30.2% admitted to opening the emails, but stopped right before opening the attachment.
Most malicious emails appear to come from financial institutions, followed by social media websites, and online payment services.
The study has found that women are more likely to fall for scams that leverage the names of social networks (8.2% to 5.6%). In contrast, men are more likely to take the bait if they’re promised monetary rewards (9.4% to 3.8%), or raunchy photographs of celebrities (2.8% to 0.6%), themselves (2.3% to 0.9%), or their friends (1.1% to 0%).
The report, "Email Spam and Related User Behavior," shows that US users have become aware of the fact that unsolicited sales offers are not the only form of spam. 41.5% say social media posts can be spam, while 40.8% and 35% mentioned text messages and phone messages, respectively.
In addition, 26% say they regard uninteresting messages from friends and acquaintances as being spam.
So how many would take action against spammers? According to the study, around 31% of Americans.
Interestingly, men are more likely to take action than women. Close to 9% of the surveyed men would send an angry email to the spammer. Only 1% of the interviewed women would do the same.
7% of men would call the spammer, 3.8% would send an angry social media post, while 3.1% would send an angry text. On the other hand, only 4.2% of women would make an angry phone call, 1.9% of them would send an angry social media post, and only 0.4% would send an angry text.
“Spam email is an unfortunate fact of life in the computer age. Users have become more aware of the threats they face, but spammers have also become craftier in disguising these messages,” said Halon’s North American CEO and co-founder, Jonas Falck.
“Web hosting and email service providers don’t always prevent spam email threats from being delivered, so people need to be careful when encountering suspicious emails that may hijack their computer or render it inoperable.”