Box of Meat

lies, damn lies, and anti-spam vendor press releases

There’s a lot of chatter about a recent study purporting to show that 29.1% of internet users has bought something from spam.  As ITWire reported, “Marshal were not only interested in how many people were purchasing from a spam source, but also what goods and services they were buying. Perhaps less surprisingly this revealed that sex and drugs sell well online.”  But at downloadsquad, Lee Mathews discovered the shocking truth: “the survey only involved 600 people.”

Lee goes on to ask “[i]s it worse that about 180 of those people bought products from spam, or that media outlets are willing to jump all over a statistic that comes from a sampling of less than .0001% of the roughly 360 million people currently using the internet?”  I’d go with the latter.  Vendors who make such outrageous claims only make it more difficult for the real facts to be revealed — and the facts are scary enough without any self-serving augmentation.

Update: some interesting responses on CircleID.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 29 Percent of Internet Users Admit Purchasing from Spam
• Spam sells nearly 1 in 3, says survey [Stats]
• Is spam a matter of supply and demand?
• 29% of Internet Users Have Bought Things From Spam Email?? Say It Aint So!
• 30% Of Internet Users Admit To Buying From Spam