世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey with a slightly odd topic conducted by goo Research regarding receiving mail from MAILER-DAEMON. Just in case you are wondering what this is, legitimate replies from the legitimate MAILER-DEMON means that mail counldn’t be delivered, but often spam or viruses use fake MAILER-DEMON messages to try to get past filters.

Demographics

Between the 9th and 11th of March, 1,072 members of the goo Research monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.8% of the sample were male, 25.3% in their twenties, 23.0% in their thirties, 22.4% in their forties, 21.4% in their fifties, and 8.0% in their sixties.

In Q1SQ3 about three in five read MAILER-DAEMON messages at least some of the time, yet it is one of the vectors of spam and viruses. Note that for some reason most Japanese MAILER-DAEMONs speak in English, and only very rarely does Japanese feature, even in my employer’s internal system, even though it seems like all you need to do is to provide a simple template file for the new error message, in the case of Postfix at least. Does it incorrectly handle Japanese and other double-byte characters, I wonder?

Research results

Q1: Have you ever received a mail from “MAILER-DAEMON”? (Sample size=1,072)

Yes (to SQs)	53.5%
No	46.5%

Q1SQ1: Do you know the meaning of “MAILER-DAEMON”? (Sample size=573)

Know it well	23.6%
Know something about it	45.4%
Don’t know it at all	31.1%

Q1SQ2: What did you think the first time you received a mail from “MAILER-DAEMON”? (Sample size=573, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Thought that mail I’d sent hadn’t been delivered	280	48.9%
Thought it was spam	169	29.5%
Felt surprised	157	27.4%
Felt uneasy	152	26.5%
Thought it was a message from a foreigner	81	14.1%
Thought it was wrongly delivered	73	12.7%
Didn’t really feel anything in particular	37	6.5%
Other	9	1.6%

Q1SQ3: Do you read the mail from “MAILER-DAEMON”? (Sample size=573)

Always read	18.2%
Sometimes read	41.4%
Never read	40.5%

In addition, 74.2% thought it would be useful if MAILER-DAEMON messages were all in Japanese.