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Little Room for Real Messages: How Spam Clogs an E-mail Account

CSEF · 2002 Social Sciences (Junior Division Only)

Nathan E. Fisher · San Diego Jewish Academy, San Diego

Overview

Objectives/Goals Which part of the day receives the most spam? Which e-mail account gets the most spam? Is there a quantifiable difference between subscribed spam vs. non-subscribed spam? Methods/Materials Materials: E-mail accounts on a computer. Methods: Sign up for 6 e-mail accounts, two as controls, the last four were signed up to five different sites to which a thirteen year old boy would visit. After one week, the unsubscribed feature was used for all incoming mail for the last two accounts. Results Afternoon received the most spam. Registering without unsubscribing received the most spam. By unsubscribing, the amount of spam was reduced, but it took time to use the #unsubscribe# feature. The ratio of spam received was approximately 9 non-subscribed spam messages to 1 subscribed spam message. A duplicate experiment is currently in progress. Conclusions/Discussion Companies are selling or passing on e-mail addresses to other companies.

Summary statement

Numerous e-mail accounts were activated and monitored to test how spam clogs e-mail accounts.

Help received

Mother helped in typing the report and helped string the board; Father helped paste pages and labels; Teachers helped edit my textbook; Brother taught me how to use Microsoft Excel. He also helped me how to understand how to enter the data and then to be able to graph it. He also helped me research the topic

Competition history

  • CSEF 2002 Social Sciences (Junior Division Only) · Entry J1704

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