Ipsos Reid has released a number of updated statistics and reports over the past week. The biggest news is that net usage has eclipsed even TV amongst young adults. Plus a report on use of blogs and whether we trust them.
Internet usage: Ipsos-Reid reports Canadian usage of the ‘net is up to an average of 12.7 hours a week, compared to three years ago at 8.7 hours in 2002. It comes at the expense of radio (11 hours), but TV (at 14.3 hours) is not faring so well either.
Category: June Macdonald
It must be human curiosity, but when the latest spam report came out from computer security expert Sophos I headed over to see, ‘what are people falling for now?’
The top spam categories are still medications (Viagra and its cousins account for 40%), and mortgages, but a growing concern is the rise in “pump and dump” schemes. These types of spam promote purchase of a stock with misleading or false information, sometimes ‘enhanced’ with real publication quotes to lend an air of legitimacy. Their aim is to target small companies with limited resources to combat such a campaign, elevate the stock price so that the spammers can cash out and leave investors high and dry and the company facing a PR crisis and worse.
Spammers exist only because there are enough people buying into their fraud. Many spam schemes are now run by the mafia, funding other nefarious activities including drug trafficking and arms dealing.
For the good of us all, isn’t it time to implement a user licence for the inbox?