Nearly 30% of Internet users make spam purchases.

For many of us that spend a good portion of our day-to-day lives online, the idea that people actually buy products from spam messages they receive in their inboxes seems laughable. However, new research from security company Marshal suggests quite the contrary.

Marshal polled over 600 people with 29.1% claiming to have purchased products from spam emails. It is hard to count this poll as completely accurate with that number of responses, but the statistic stands out as a surprising one nonetheless. Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read Write Web writes:

Of course these numbers should be taken with a giant grain of salt. The study was of just over 600 respondents who visited the Marshal website. The question they were asked appears to have been framed in a pretty presumptuous way. "What purchases have you made from spam?"

Kirkpatrick has a point, but as Marshal itself cites, even a Forrester Research poll from a few years ago found that 20% of 6,000 respondents had made purchases from spam. Considering that spam has not decreased, but more likely increased, in the time between the two studies, a 10% spike isn't as hard to believe as the fact that people are purchasing from spam at all.

The Reason It Won't End
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I filled out a survey once only to make a mistake of placing my email address and lots of spam now.