A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE PERCEPTIONS OF END USERS IN THE EASTERN, WESTERN, CENTRAL, SOUTHERN AND NORTHERN REGIONS OF SAUDI ARABIA ABOUT EMAIL SPAM AND DEALING WITH IT

This paper presents the results of a survey of email users in different regions of Saudi Arabia about email SPAM. The survey investigated the nature of email SPAM, how email users in the eastern, western, central, southern and northern 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 the 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 showed that the participants in the central and western regions were more aware of SPAM than the participants in other regions. The results revealed that the volume of email SPAM was different from region to another and the volume of SPAM received by the participants in the northern and central regions was larger than that received in other regions. The results indicated that the majority of email SPAM received by the participants in different regions 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 phishing and fraud, and business advertisements. The results also showed that a few participants in all regions responded to SPAM and the average of the participants who responded to SPAM was larger in the southern region than other regions. The results showed that most of the participants were not aware of Anti-SPAM programs and the participants in the central region were more aware of Anti-SPAM programs than the participants in other regions. The results showed that the participants in all regions estimated that the existing Anti-SPAM programs were more effective in detecting English SPAM than Arabic SPAM. The results showed that most of the participants in all regions were not aware of the government efforts to combat SPAM and the participants in the central region were more aware of the government efforts than the participants in other regions. The results also showed that most of the participants in all regions were not aware of the ISPs efforts to combat SPAM and the participants in the central and western regions were more aware of the ISPs efforts than the participants in other regions. International Journal of Cyber-Security and Digital Forensics (IJCSDF) 1(4): 297-310 The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2012 (ISSN: 2305-0012) also use many methods to bypass SPAM filters such as tokenization and obfuscation [27]. Email SPAM is defined as "Unsolicited, unwanted email that is sent indiscriminately, directly or indirectly, by a sender having no current relationship with the recipient" [12], [13]. It is also defined as Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE) that is sent to a large number of recipients who were not asked if they wanted to receive it [4], [14], [18]. Some studies [6], [7], [25] defined email SPAM as Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) that contains business advertisements sent to a large number of recipients. There are legal and technical methods [2] to combat SPAM. Legally, some countries enacted laws against SPAM. Examples of these countries include the United States of America [26], European Union countries and Australia [5]. However, there are no laws in Saudi Arabia to combat SPAM although research and projects were conducted to assess the problem of SPAM in the country. Technically, there exist many filters to combat SPAM. Examples of these filters include content based filters such as Bayesian [24], keywords [11] and genetic algorithms [15], and origin based filters like black lists [11], white lists [22], origin diversity analysis [16] and challenge response systems [21]. However, some of these techniques need to be updated to detect new types of email SPAM due to spammers developing ways to bypass these techniques. This study aimed to gain an understanding about: a. The nature of email SPAM, its definition based on email users’ opinions, its volume and its types in different regions of Saudi Arabia. b. Differences between Arabic SPAM and English SPAM received by the participants in different regions of Saudi Arabia. c. The effects of email SPAM on email users in different regions of Saudi Arabia. d. How email users in the eastern, western, central, southern and northern deal with email SPAM. e. The efforts of government to combat email SPAM. f. The efforts of ISPs to combat email SPAM. g. Evaluation of email users’ perception in different regions of Saudi Arabia for the effectiveness of Anti-SPAM filters in detecting Arabic and English email SPAM. 2. METHODOLOGY 2.1. Measures It was decided that the best way to answer the research questions was through a questionnaire. Therefore, a questionnaire was distributed to the participants in different region of Saudi Arabia and the responses were analyzed. Initially a pilot questionnaire was prepared and distributed to a few participants to get their comments about the questions. Then all the participants completed the 10 page questionnaire which included both yes/no answers and open ended answers. The questionnaire consisted of three main parts as follows. 2.1. 1. General information questions In this part, the participants were asked for the following information: gender, age, nationality, speaking language, highest level of education, major area of study, work status and the nature of the work. These questions helped in understanding and comparing the level of awareness of users about email SPAM. Examples for the first part of questions of the survey can be seen in Figure 1.