Let's get one
thing clear - Spam is very bad. Spam is demeaning, intrusive, frustrating, etc.
However, the reaction to Spam is defeatist, Luditist, intrusive and
reactionary.
Firstly, lets
look at the reality of Spam; you download your emails, you delete the Spam.
Come on, are they
that hard to identify? Is the email from Aunt Dot injured by the Spam? Do you
have to spend hours reading each one to the bitter end to guess it is spam?
Email programmes
come with a button called - delete; so delete - end of the matter. I hear you
whining: "but they take so long to download"; "they fill my
inbox"; "they contain pornography", etc. One answer: Delete.
Actually, the
porn Spam does present a bigger problem- for children of course, and the degree
of insult they produce. To be honest, if your email is privacy protected, which
it should be, then these problems can be partially avoided as well.
By the way, a
major Spam identifier, notes that 80% of Spam originates with just 20 groups.
So how does
everyone suffers from over-reaction when dealing with Spam? How many genuine
emails get blocked by Spam walls? I will use some examples of personal
experience to show you the problems.
I have had
important emails blocked just because I used an ISP that one of the 20 gangs
had used for a period. This ISP was actually the major telephone service for a
country, one that about 50% of the country's residents used. Great response:
close half a country's international emails.
I have had emails
blocked because I used the word, 'free'. Now I cannot say free, and hundreds of
schools write to me to ask if my Project is free.
A professor at a
University asked me about my Project; he was considering doing research with
me, but I could not reply to him: intrusive Spam wall.
How many international
websites today do not include any email contact details, or go to great lengths
to hide them? What is the point of a website if you cannot respond and
communicate with the owner? Am I expected to make international phone calls,
send letters, snail mail?
I can go on. The
bottom line is that our fears of using a delete button have allowed us to start
to lose one of the great technological innovations of this era: email.
Email is better
than great: it is better than landing on the moon. How did we live without
email? This amazing technology is being murdered by ourselves and our
ridiculous, stupid over-reaction.
Weigh the good of
email and the cost of Spam; the balance is wrong. Wake up! To join the fight against the spam lords.
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