The Email Wars

From an article on MSN

Commentary–In the world of IT, e-mail is treated a lot like electricity. We want it to work and not have to worry.

But e-mail’s functionality has been devalued by unrelenting abuse in the form of spam, viruses and phishing. We’ve even reached the point where one must ask whether fed-up users are ready to declare “lights out” on e-mail.

When scammers first began to proliferate on the Internet, e-mail users were often tricked by fraudulent e-mail. The infamous PayPal and Citibank spoofs, among others, shook up the online world. However, we are now seeing a reversal: E-mail users are increasingly citing “good” e-mails as fraudulent, indicating that they are even more skeptical about legitimate e-mail.

In fact, there has been a notable shift in e-mail user perspectives as revealed in the (http://survey.mailfrontier.com/survey/quiztest.html) MailFrontier Phishing IQ Test. The Phishing IQ Test, taken by more than 500,000 individuals to date, tests users’ ability to identify a series of e-mail samples as either fraudulent or legitimate.

Respondents nowadays correctly identify phishing e-mails 82 percent of the time. But they correctly identify legitimate e-mails only 52 percent of the time. These findings suggest that e-mail users may be getting better at discovering phishing scam attempts but are even more skeptical about legitimate e-mail.

Additional data supports this development. Research and analyst firm Gartner released a report in June, in which more than 80 percent of U.S. online consumers said their concerns about online attacks have affected their trust in e-mail from companies or individuals they don’t know personally. Of these consumers, more than 85 percent delete suspect e-mail without opening it.

It is clear: E-mail is at a tipping point. If e-mail skepticism remains unabated, it will have a significant impact on online transactions and communications. Banks are seeing this skepticism impact online banking, and retailers are seeing

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