Spam messages have become an increasingly common pain point for consumers all around the world, but in spite of the fact that this is the case, not all that much progress has been made in keeping them at bay. According to a recent survey conducted by McAfee, 40% of Americans would prefer constant food poisoning to a year of spam messages.
Most Americans, or 57% to be precise, stated that they’d be willing to do taxes on a monthly basis if it saved them from spam messages, and a whopping 54% said they’d prefer a root canal. This just goes to show that consumers would rather experience serious physical pain than go through the torment of spam messages.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that people receive about 12 of these messages on a daily basis. The rise of AI has given malicious actors countless opportunities to churn them out in ever greater quantities, and the same goes for phishing sites as well.
Such a development is dangerous because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up making spam more difficult to spot. 87% of Americans admitted that they are a harder time differentiating between scam messages and emails since they seem rather similar to genuine communications, and over one in three stated that these scams are able to deliver more personal messages. The lack of typos and other types of grammatical errors is also contributing to the higher rate of success that these spam attacks might have.
As a result, two out of three Americans reportedly fell prey to scams. Over 50% of victims ended up suffering from financial losses, with 15% losing over $1,000 with all things having been considered and taken into account.
It is critical that steps be taken to educate consumers about the evolution of spam and scam messages, otherwise this problem will continue to get worse than it already is in the here and now. 62% of respondents mentioned that scams trying to convince them that they won prizes came up in the past year, which just goes to show that finding patterns can be a great way to avoid falling prey to them.
Photo: DIW
Read next: PSA: Google to Purge Dormant Accounts Starting in December
Most Americans, or 57% to be precise, stated that they’d be willing to do taxes on a monthly basis if it saved them from spam messages, and a whopping 54% said they’d prefer a root canal. This just goes to show that consumers would rather experience serious physical pain than go through the torment of spam messages.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that people receive about 12 of these messages on a daily basis. The rise of AI has given malicious actors countless opportunities to churn them out in ever greater quantities, and the same goes for phishing sites as well.
Such a development is dangerous because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up making spam more difficult to spot. 87% of Americans admitted that they are a harder time differentiating between scam messages and emails since they seem rather similar to genuine communications, and over one in three stated that these scams are able to deliver more personal messages. The lack of typos and other types of grammatical errors is also contributing to the higher rate of success that these spam attacks might have.
As a result, two out of three Americans reportedly fell prey to scams. Over 50% of victims ended up suffering from financial losses, with 15% losing over $1,000 with all things having been considered and taken into account.
It is critical that steps be taken to educate consumers about the evolution of spam and scam messages, otherwise this problem will continue to get worse than it already is in the here and now. 62% of respondents mentioned that scams trying to convince them that they won prizes came up in the past year, which just goes to show that finding patterns can be a great way to avoid falling prey to them.
Read next: PSA: Google to Purge Dormant Accounts Starting in December
