Spam

MIXED GRAMMAR EXERCISE
Fill in the verbs given, in the correct form.

SPAM

Looking back over the e-mails I (1)________________(receive) in the last couple of weeks, I can see there is at least one message a day from someone I don’t know, offering some service or product I am supposed (2)______________(want). In some cases, I can (3)_________________(see) where they (4)_________(get) my e-mail address from, but in others I have no idea. For me, this unsolicited junk email is not a problem, I can just (5)_________________(erase) it from my computer. However, in a recent survey, (6)_________________ (carry out) for the company Novell Inc. in the UK, 75% of those who (7)_______________(question) claimed to receive as many as five junk e-mails a day, and 15% calculated that they (8)_________________(spend) at least an hour a day dealing with unsolicited spam. Apart from spam which tries to sell products or services, there is also the problem of hoax virus warnings, chain letters (where terrible things (9)_____________ (happen) to you if you (10)___________ (not pass) on the message to fifteen other people) and jokes from friends and colleagues. Although sometimes the content involved can (11)____ (be) offensive and contain racist or sexist language, most of it is relatively harmless. On the other hand, in terms of wasting employees’ time, it (12)_____ (be) a real headache for many businesses. There are various strategies you can (13)_________________ (adopt) with spam. The easiest remedy is just (14)____________ (delete) any messages which come from an unknown sender or look suspicious. To deal with nuisance mail which comes from a regular source, one solution is (15)______________ (set) up your email program to ignore mail from that particular address. More legitimate spammers often (16)___________ (give) you the option to ‘unsubscribe’ so you (17)________________ (not receive) any more of their messages, although in my experience this often doesn’t seem (18)_______________ (make) any difference. Even so, while you (19)_________________ (deal) with spam you (20)_______________________ (not do) the work you were hired to do. If the data analysed in the survey is correct, 1.4% of the national work force is unproductive for this reason at any time during a working day. With a national UK wage bill of £368bn a year, this means that for UK businesses spam (21)___________________ (represent) an annual cost of around £5bn.

Adapted from Simon Clarke’s text – in company/copyable material


Key to mixed Grammar exercise:

1. have received
2. to want
3. see
4. got
5. erase
6. carried out
7. were questioned
8. spent
9. will happen (would happen)
10. don’t (didn’t)
11. be
12. is
13. adopt
14. to delete
15. to set up
16. give
17. don’t receive
18. to make
19. are dealing
20. aren’t doing
21. represents