Study Finds 66% of Spam Fraudulent

April 29, 2003
A study by federal law enforcement officials finds that most spam is deceptive. While the conclusion is hardly surprising, it's at least notable since there have been few other large-scale studies of the offers being promoted through spam.

In a random sample of 1,000 pieces of unsolicited commercial e-mail from three Federal Trade Commission (FTC) data sets, 66 percent contained false "From" lines, "Subject" lines, or message text. The study, which was conducted by the FTC's Division of Marketing Practices, is the first extensive review of the likely truth or falsity of claims appearing in spam.

• Investment/Business Opportunity;
• Adult;
• Finance;
• Product/Services;
• Health;
• Computer/Internet;
• Leisure/Travel;
• Education; and
• a catch-all category, "Other," for types of offers that appeared infrequently.

Investment/Business Opportunity offers accounted for 20 percent of the spam studied, the majority being work-at-home, franchise, chain letter, and other non-securities offers. Three categories combined - Adult, Finance, and Investment/Business Opportunity - comprised 55 percent of the random spam sample analyzed by the FTC staff.

The analysis of the "From" line in each message revealed that 33 percent of the spam messages contained indicators of falsity. Nearly half of the spam with false "From" information, or 46 percent, claimed to be from someone with a personal relationship with the recipient. In all types of these messages, senders frequently obscured their identities in the "From" line.

Falsity in the "Subject" line was less prevalent, with 22 percent of the sample studied containing information that appeared to be false. Of the sample of spam containing misleading subject lines, however, 42 percent misrepresented that the sender had a personal relationship with the recipient. While false "Subject" lines were found in all types of offers, more than one-third of "adult" offers appeared to misrepresent the content of the message in the subject line.

All types of spam in the sample analyzed by FTC staff contained indicators of falsity in the "From" or "Subject" line, with incidence rates ranging from a low of approximately 36 percent for education-related UCE to a high of approximately 53 percent for finance-related spam. Forty-four percent of spam analyzed contained hallmarks of falsity in either the "From" line or "Subject" line.

The incidence of likely false claims in the text of spam varied considerably among types of offers. Approximately 40 percent of the messages reviewed however, had at least one indication of falsity. The highest category for signs of falsity, 90 percent, was the sample that advertised investment and business opportunities.

Other topics generating a significant percentage of messages with indicators of falsity included those involving health (48%) and leisure/travel (47%). Common "health" spam messages advertised weight-loss products and intimacy aids; common "leisure/travel" spam messages offered prize and vacation promotions.

When analyzed together, falsity rates in the "From" or Subject" line or in the message text ranged from a low of 42 percent for spam involving the sale of products and services to 96 percent for spam offering investment and business opportunities. Overall, 66 percent of spam analyzed contained false "From" lines, "Subject" lines, or message text.

Several states have enacted laws in recent years requiring senders of spam to begin every subject line with the phrase "ADV:" (an abbreviation used to identify advertising) in messages sent to recipients of those states. The FTC staff's study of a sample of messages found that compliance with this labeling requirement was sparse, accounting for approximately two percent of the spam analyzed.

The spam study revealed that messages rarely request recipients to submit personal information, but those that do typically show signs of falsity.

To help determine the scope of sexually explicit images contained in spam, the FTC staff analyzed the prevalence of pornographic imagery in the random sample. In the 17 percent of spam advertising pornographic Web sites, "adult images" were included in the body of the message. In total, 41 percent of spam containing "adult imagery" contained false information in their "From" or "Subject" lines.

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