Interesting article in the Toronto Globe and Mail that highlights research being done that actually shows what happens when people respond to spam emails and actually buy products mentioned in them.
The Centre for Global e-health is a joint effort of Toronto University and the University Health Networks, funded by the Canadian Government. A research programme they are doing involved actually buying prescription drugs that were advertised in spam emails.
There are two things that are really interesting. Firstly, that their report estimates that about two thirds of all email sent was spam, and one third of that was for health related products. and that of the products they bought, they actually received about a third of them.
They also say that there was no noticeable attempt to misuse their credit card details. This would seem to imply that there are companies behind the spam they send out with products that they do actually sell, which I’d never assumed to be the case. What is as interesting is that we don’t know (or at least I don’t!) actually how many people do click through on spam and actually buy products (I’d assumed no-one did) but also the researchers don’t know at the moment what was actually in the products they received - they’re doing tests at the moment and hopefully will have results later in the year, which of course, is a huge issue.
Given the cost of prescribed drugs, in the US particularly, online pharmacies and buying prescription drugs online is potentially a huge worldwide issue. What this report highlights is that spam isn’t purely one of those annoying things that you’re ant-virus software will get rid of, it has the potential to literally affect the health and well being of some of the most vulnerable people in society.
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