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Langa Letter: E-Mail Hideously Unreliable
The great Fred Langa conducted a test with over 10,000 volunteers to see how much ordinary private email gets through. He got a 40% failure (i.e. non-response) rate.
Which sounds scary, but I think there are some flaws in the interpretation. Specifically, since the test used a return name and address recipients would not know, plus subject lines like "hello" and "follow up", I wouldn't be surpised if the mails got through the filters only to be deleted by the recipients without even looking at the contents. I get a lot of spam with "hi" or "hello" in the subject lines.
Then there's the laziness factor - people volunteer for tests then forget or can't be bothered to follow the instructions in the test message.
So I don't think spam filters etc. are quite the hazard the results suggest - which is not to say that the false positives problem isn't an issue.
The great Fred Langa conducted a test with over 10,000 volunteers to see how much ordinary private email gets through. He got a 40% failure (i.e. non-response) rate.
Which sounds scary, but I think there are some flaws in the interpretation. Specifically, since the test used a return name and address recipients would not know, plus subject lines like "hello" and "follow up", I wouldn't be surpised if the mails got through the filters only to be deleted by the recipients without even looking at the contents. I get a lot of spam with "hi" or "hello" in the subject lines.
Then there's the laziness factor - people volunteer for tests then forget or can't be bothered to follow the instructions in the test message.
So I don't think spam filters etc. are quite the hazard the results suggest - which is not to say that the false positives problem isn't an issue.
Permalink | January 14, 2004 |
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