Inspired by McAfee’s S.P.A.M experiment launched yesterday, today I will open a new email address, use it to make online purchases and register for promotions.
But unlike the McAfee experiment, I will not be using a clean laptop without spam protection. What I will do instead is to monitor the spam emails that I would receive in my new email address, and will report the results. I will keep logs of my usage of my new email address as well as details of site and their promotion offers.
Whether or not the spam emails I will receive have been correctly identified by my email service provider as spams will also indicate the effectiveness of my email service provider in filtering out spam emails and the sites who are parties to spam as well as their spam-related activities.
The McAfee’s S.P.A.M (acronym for Spammed Persistently All Month) will run for the whole month of April with participants from around the world - ranging from homemakers, government executives, and students to retirees - who will surf the web, make online purchases and register for promotions.
The participants, as reported by CNN, had been been provided with a clean laptop without spam protection and a new email address. The participants will blog about their experiences daily at http://www.mcafee.com/spamexperiment.
The experiment is to prove the link between spam and cybercrime and to show the devastating effects of spam.
S.P.A.M. Experiment participants are from ten countries spanning the globe, including Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.
McAfee McAfee, Inc. is based in California and is the world’s largest dedicated security technology company.
