Consumers Are Aware of Sender ID in E-Mail, Study Finds
Though AOL and Goodmail are in the news of late with their e-mail authentication efforts, consumers are much more aware of Yahoo's DomainKeys and MSN Hotmail's Sender ID, according to a report released yesterday.Forty-three percent of consumers surveyed by e-mail solutions firm Epsilon Interactive, New York, have seen a Sender ID notice in their MSN and Hotmail e-mail accounts ("The sender of this message could not be verified by Sender ID"), Epsilon found in its annual "Email & Spam: Consumer Attitudes and Behaviors" survey.
Most users said they "heed the warning" and would not trust the sender of an e-mail with that Sender ID message. A much smaller portion -- 19 percent -- of Yahoo Mail users said they recently saw Yahoo's DomainKeys message: "Yahoo DomainKeys has confirmed that this message has been sent from a company I subscribed to receive newsletters from."
Meanwhile, the survey also found that Yahoo replaced AOL as the most-used e-mail service, garnering a 23 percent market share among consumers, compared to AOL, 15 percent; Outlook Net, 16 percent; Hotmail, 12 percent; and Gmail, 5 percent.
In other survey findings, 56 percent of consumers said they are receiving less spam than they did a year ago. Consumers also are getting smarter about phishing: 69 percent said they can identify phishing e-mails, compared to 64 percent last year.
In other positive news, consumers said e-mails are more relevant. Fifty-eight percent said e-mail is usually targeted to their needs and interests, up from 53 percent from a year ago.
