May 2011
Featured in this insight: IT & telecommunications
Market research finds UK spam texts reach 4 million daily: Price comparison site uSwitch have undertaken a new survey that reveals UK consumers are now receiving 4 million unsolicited texts a day from adult chat lines and other nuisance services.
This demonstrates a massive leap of 300% in just four years since the company’s last survey in 2007, and compares with a rise of only 30% for spam emails during the same period, which are measuring at 107 million per day.
Technology expert at uSwitch.com, Ernest Doku, commented: “Spam is the great bugbear of the internet age. Unfortunately, as we’ve become more dependent on our internet connections, so spam has spiralled to epidemic proportions. And the problem is no longer isolated to computer users – 17 million mobile users are now troubled by spam text messages too.”
Spam sent to mobile devices is particularly problematic as SMS messages may incur charges to the recipient when opened and will often attempt to lead the customer into expensive subscription services or payment for competition entries.
The UK famously has more mobile phone sets now than people. And with the ubiquitous nature of mobiles coupled with the relatively easy availability to personal user information they present, the figure is expected to increase even further over the coming years.
