DOES REGISTERING ON WEBSITE EXPOSE INDIVIDUAL TO INCREASE SPAM EMAIL?
Date
2021-07-21
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Tuskegee University
Abstract
Does Registering on Websites Expose Individuals
to Increased Spamming?
Spam has become a major challenge worldwide, so determining what might impact its amount
might help reduce it. This thesis, an exploratory study, examines the relationship between
registering on websites and its impact on the receipt of spam email. That is, the research attempts
to determine if the more users register on websites, sometimes indiscriminately, the more spam
they receive. A computer-based survey was constructed and distributed to faculty members at
Tuskegee University. Overall, the analyses of data indicated a positive relationship between
registering on websites and the quantity of spam received. Additional research is needed, though,
to determine the strength of the relationship between the two. Future research could also help to
determine other factors that might impact the receipt of spam.
Description
Spam electronic mail (spam email or spam, for short) has become a major problem for
Internet and email users, and a key vehicle for distributing malware. It is no surprise, therefore,
that a variety of efforts are being made to not only reduce the quantity of spam but also to lessen
the impact that the malware has. The Spamhaus Project (https://www.spamhaus.org/) provides
the following technical definition of spam (https://www.spamhaus.org/consumer/definition/):
An electronic message is “spam” if (A) the recipient's personal identity and context are
irrelevant because the message is equally applicable to many other potential recipients;
AND (B) the recipient has not verifiably granted deliberate, explicit, and still-revocable
permission for it to be sent.
The academic literature has researched various issues related to spam and offered a
variety of both behavioral and technical papers. Consistently, a topic of frequent discussion
focuses on what users can do to reduce the amount of spam that they receive. A variety of
solutions have been suggested, prime among them being users having an email address, separate
from a personal (and private) one, that can be used to register on various websites. This, of
course, implies that the more one registers with a particular email address online, the more spam
the person receives on that address.
To date, little (if any) academic research has been done to collect data and examine if
such an implication has any truth to it. The practitioner literature also suggests that the fewer
websites one registers on, the lower will be the volume of spam email on the address one uses for
registration. Conversely stated, the more a user registers on websites using a particular email
address, the more spam s/he receives on that email address. However, again, little to no
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empirical evidence is provided to determine if such is indeed the case. This study will seek to
empirically address the association between registering on websites and the receipt of spam
email. At the onset, therefore, this study proposes the following research question:
Do users who register on more and more websites using a particular email address
receive more spam e-mail on that address?
A brief background on the problem of spam is now provided and is followed by a section on the
direction of the research.
Keywords
Spam Email