Title: EMAIL SPAM IN SAUDI ARABIA AND HOW DO END USERS DEAL WITH IT?

Year of Publication: 2012
Page Numbers: 123-135
Authors: Hasan Alkahtani, Paul Gardner-Stephen, Robert Goodwin
Conference Name: The International Conference on Computing, Networking and Digital Technologies (ICCNDT2012)
- Bahrain

Abstract:


This paper presents the results of a survey of email users in Saudi Arabia about email SPAM. The survey investigated the nature of email SPAM, how email users dealt with it, and the efforts made to combat it. It also investigated the effectiveness of existing Anti- SPAM filters in detecting Arabic and English email SPAM. 1,500 participants located in Eastern, Western, Central, Southern and Northern regions of Saudi Arabia were surveyed and completed surveys were collected from 1,020 of the participants. The results showed that there were different definitions for email SPAM based on different users’ opinions in Saudi Arabia. The results indicated that the majority of email SPAM received was written in English. The results showed that the most common type of email SPAM received in Arabic was emails related to forums and in English was business advertisements. The results indicated that Yahoo was better than Hotmail, Gmail and other email account providers in classifying email SPAM as the results revealed that the number of emails SPAM received by email users who used Yahoo was lower compared to other email account providers. The results revealed that email users who have used email for long time were more aware of SPAM and using Anti-SPAM programs than users who used email for short time. The results revealed that the most of the email users were not aware of the use of Anti-SPAM software to combat SPAM. The results indicated that the existing Anti-SPAM filters were not completely effective in detecting English and Arabic email SPAM and that these filters were more effective in detecting English SPAM than Arabic SPAM. The results indicated that most email users were not aware of government and ISPs efforts to combat email SPAM in Saudi Arabia.