KUALA LUMPUR: Once viewed as less personal method to express love compared to a phone call or handwritten note, e-mail is now becoming the preferred medium through which people share various forms of intimacy.
A poll conducted by Microsoft, which ran from Jan 25-29, revealed that many Asians feel comfortable expressing their love, flirting freely and even broaching problematic issues in their relationships via e-mail.
According to Microsoft, more than 9,300 people in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand took part in the poll.
The results showed that approximately four out of 10 Asians exchange romantic e-mails with their significant other to keep their relationships fresh and exciting.
In more detail, 53% in Malaysia, 61% in Philippines and 52% in Singapore share romantic written messages while, 36% in Thailand and 28% in Malaysia share romantic images.
Finally, 23% in Philippines and 21% in India share romantic fantasies with their partners.
More surprisingly, nearly a third of respondents revealed they have told someone they love them for the first time in an e-mail.
At the same time, close to two out of three people in these countries use e-mail as a tool to help them broach a difficult issue in their relationship.
The poll also revealed that a large number of Asians are passionate on e-mail with 29% of respondents indicating that they exchange romantic or saucy images with their love interest.
Amongst Asians, people in Thailand (36%) are the most forward when it comes to sharing saucy images — and the exchange is not only restricted to current partners.
Meanwhile 58% of Malaysian respondents have sent or received sexy e-mails to or from someone that was not a current partner — close to the regional average of 60%.
On average 44% of the respondents used their corporate e-mail accounts to send romantic messages. In Malaysia, seven out of ten respondents admitted to doing that.
However only 3% of respondents in Malaysia were caught when it came to sending racy e-mails at work — the lowest percentage among all surveyed.
“Nonetheless, our advice to Malaysians is for them to exercise more caution when it comes to expressing their love especially via office e-mail to ensure your privacy will not be compromised,” said Microsoft Malaysia chief operations and marketing officer Danny Ong.
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