Gartner Survey Shows Spam Concerns Are Becoming a Significant Factor in Consumer Preference for Internet Service Providers
New Survey Results Presented At Gartner IT Security Summit 2004
WASHINGTON, D.C. June 8, 2004 — Despite the effort and expense that Internet service providers (ISPs) are devoting to anti-spam measures, consumers still receive tremendous amounts of the unsolicited online content. According to a recent survey by Gartner, Inc., approximately one of every three online households reported that 75 percent or more of their e-mail was spam.
Gartner presented results from the survey during Gartner IT Security Summit 2004, which is taking place, through Wednesday.
"Consumer concern about spam is a significant factor in consumers' choice of an ISP," said Betsy Burton, research vice president for Gartner. "If another ISP could do a better job of stopping spam at the same price as their current ISP, 11 percent of online households said they would switch to the ISP that was better. Another 42 percent of online households said they would be more likely to switch than not."
Consumers differ significantly in how effective they believe their ISP is in stopping spam. According to the survey, 23 percent of online households believe that their ISP is not at all successful, while 7 percent believe that their ISP is extremely successful.
Ms. Burton said that enterprises that use e-mail marketing or list management for mass mailings online are often viewed negatively, as spammers, when their e-mails are not solicited by recipients or recipients are not members of a clearly defined target group that matches the e-mail content. Moreover, spammers also use the same channel to reach their recipients, which accelerates the flood of e-mails that compete with each other, she said.
The Gartner Dataquest survey, conducted in December 2003, included a nationally representative sample of online adults. Respondents included 1,427 adults age 18 or older. The sample was selected to be representative of individuals accessing the Internet from home.
Gartner IT Security Summit 2004 provides both strategic planning and tactical advice for senior-level IT executives whose jobs include enterprise security responsibilities and critical infrastructure protection. Gartner IT Security Summit 2004 covers new and emerging technologies, as well as policy, planning and compliance issues, and will help make sense of the trends, technologies and opportunities that can safeguard an IT enterprise and its assets before the next threat looms large. Additional information about the conference is available at www.gartner.com/us/itsecurity.
Additional information is available in the Gartner Dataquest report Consumers Annoyed by Increasingly Hostile Internet Environment This report examines consumers that have Internet access at home and what security issues they were concerned about such as spam, viruses, pop-upadvertising and protecting children from undesirable content, as well as their feelings about their ISP. This report can be purchased on Gartner's Web site.
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