Spam: The Business Software Alliance, a UK anti-piracy body representing many of the major software vendors, recently issued a spam-related press release which got a lot of attention in the UK press (they have great press contacts!).
To quote John Graham-Cumming’s newsletter on the subject:
1 in 5 British Consumers Buy Software from Spam: that’s according to a survey by the Business Software Alliance. I find that a pretty surprisingly high number and considering it comes from an advocacy group that tries to get people to buy legitimate copies of software I expect it’s not totally accurate. The one thing I find really surprising from the survey are these two statistics: 23% of spam is read by the person receiving it and 22% of people have bought software. Apparently, 11% of people surveyed like the idea of buying through spam because the software is cheaper.
It’s still an interesting figure, but the BSA has come up with some pretty suspect statistics in the past, so pinch of salt applies. As jgc points out, the BSA have a vested interest in making the problem sound worse than it may be in reality.
Still, the survey PDF can be read here, and is worth a look.