By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews
McAfee’s S.P.A.M. (Spammed Persistently All Month) experiment begins today. This is a global project, with 50 people, 5 from each of the 10 countries that McAfee does business in, selected from over 2,000 respondents via a Craiglist ad.
The entire month of April, participants will expose themselves to spam using a Dell laptop provided by McAfee – which they will keep – sans spam protection and with a fresh email address. As the month goes by, participants will blog about their experiences on http://www.mcafeespamexperiment.com/ (participants will blog in their native languages).
Participants won’t just be receiving spam; they’ll be responding to it, to prove just how harmful spam is. In a press release, Christopher Bolin, chief technology officer for McAfee said:
“Spam isn’t just a nuisance. It’s a tool used by cyber criminals to steal personal and business data. And, as scammers become more adept at writing spam in local languages it’s becoming more difficult for Internet users to detect spam. It’s vital that computer users understand the risks of leaving their computers unprotected.”
A good question would be just how many Nigerian / 419-type scams participants will enjoy.
Dave DeWalt, CEO for McAfee said:
“Cybercrime won’t go away without solving the problem of spam. McAfee is leading the fight against cybercrime and spam. This experiment will raise awareness of the problem by showing that a 30-day diet of spam is bad for your online health.”
Sounds a lot like a Super Size Me type experiment doesn’t it?
There’s no doubt that besides the annoyance of being buried under a mountain of spam, if you’re not wary you can become infected with viruses and trojans – or those who are the most careless can be tricked into giving away sensitive financial information.
At the end of the experiment McAfee’s Avert Labs will be analyzing the spam and writing a report. I assume they will also analyze just how many viruses were introduced to the laptops as well – as well as, since the participants are keeping the laptops, provided a fresh hard drive or formatting the old one.
We Say: It should be noted that McAfee provided both antivirus and antispam products, so it has a vested interest in this study.
Ready, set, start clicking on that spam!
Dis here be an officiated typer message from yer bank… Please enter account details below for verificationing purposes.
Not sure if this will be successful given the short period of time.
When I create a new e-mail address, it’s clear where the spam originates, especially if I use that address officially. You can always see who sells it or “accidentally” lets it leak out.
On the other hand, if you create a Gmail address and NEVER use it, it gets SPAM eventually, but not necessarily within the first 30 days. No telling how that happens….
So, it’s a good experiment but not one that will probably produce meaningful results unless the users use the address in newsgroups, sign up for Blue Mountain Greeting Cards, etc.
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“On the other hand, if you create a Gmail address and NEVER use it, it gets SPAM eventually, but not necessarily within the first 30 days. No telling how that happens….”
the rest of your post is correct, but this part I have to take some issue with.
I have a gmail (just to have), which I never use, and have never given out. except to register on other Google sites.
I get TONS and TONS and TONS of spam. we’re talking something like 100-200 a day. 99.8% of it is filtered out, but then, there’s that 0.2% that’s not.
even if you have a completely fresh email, various spammers can target you by “guessing” your username, and then just tacking the domain on the end. this has happened with my gmail, but also with my primary email – since my login is basically my first initial + last name.
in the case of spam, desirability of making your email easy to remember for friends and family, is also easy for hackers to target. especially with hugely popular email services such as gmail and yahoo. they can put (almost) anything in front of the @, and it will probably register a hit. and by culling usernames from well established email lists, it makes it 100x easier to target these: if you’re going to be bobsmith123@aol or yahoo, chances are you’re going to be bobsmith123 when you register at gmail. or at least, there will be another bobsmith123 attracted by that simplicity.
Tips to avoid spam: http://news.alibaba.com/article/detail/safe-trading/100067621-1-tips-avoid-spam.html