• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, March 9, 2005

The good news is that consumers report receiving less spam than in the past, but the bad news is that most say they've been infected with spyware, according to a study commissioned by e-mail marketer Bigfoot Interactive and released Tuesday at a conference hosted by the company in New York.

For the study, RoperASW conducted interviews in February with 537 adults who have Internet access at home. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they thought that the quantity of spam they received in the last year decreased; at the same time, about the same proportion-- 55 percent--said they had been infected with spyware.

The report also revealed that consumers worry about spyware even if they haven't been infected. Eighty-two percent said they either agreed or strongly agreed that they are concerned about spyware and the threat it poses to online privacy.

While phishing has also drawn media attention, only about one in three (34 percent) reported that they had been targeted. Sixty-four percent said they were confident they could detect phishing scams.

The report also revealed that spam folders wrongly tag wanted e-mail as unsolicited commercial e-mail. Thirty-two percent of respondents said that e-mail they had requested from a trusted source was delivered to a spam folder. About half (52 percent) reported routinely checking junk folders for legitimate messages.