US web users confused by buzzwords
25 July 2005
Web lingo is continuing to confuse consumers in the US, according to a new report.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project found that most US web users are oblivious to the meaning of buzzwords such as "RSS", "podcasting" and "phishing".
The poll found that just nine per cent of respondents had a "good idea" what RSS (Really Simple Syndication) was, 65 per cent said they were not really sure, and 26 per cent said they had never heard of it.
Only 13 per cent of those quizzed said they had a good idea of what the term podcasting meant, 64 per cent were unsure and 23 per cent had never heard of it. The research also showed that 29 per cent of those surveyed had a good idea of the meaning of the term "phishing".
The survey of more than 1,300 Internet users also discovered that respondents had a better understanding of internet terms like spam (88 per cent), firewall (78 per cent), spyware (78 per cent), internet cookies (68 per cent) and adware (52 per cent).
Researchers pointed out that it has been barely a year since the term podcasting was coined, but warned that phishing scams, which aim to trick users into divulging sensitive information, were one of the most dangerous threats on the internet.
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