Such a harmless question can triggers a lot of emotions nowadays. It almost works like a global "ice breaker" because there is hardly a person in this world who does not have a strong opinion on that. Furthermore, the reaction of a person to this question will tell you a lot about her or his personality, so it nearly has a psychological value.

In fact, SPAM mails have increased so much in numbers, that they cause real financial damage to any company. That can range from a couple of thousand to several hundred thousand dollars a year, depending on the size of a company. It is also hard to judge. Besides the man hours used for SPAM defense - how do you put a price tag to mails which were deleted by mistake thinking it was SPAM? Or what value do you give to the fact that good E-mail newsletters have completely lost their significance since people immediately take a negative approach to any unwanted mail?

I remember that years ago we still wrote back to the sender asking to stop mailing our company. But receiving 200 SPAM's a day we somehow got discouraged... Furthermore we know by now that answering such a mail will "up-grade" an E-mail address for SPAM mailers and that is the last thing one wants to do. 

Sometimes I really wonder if the companies offering solutions for SPAM are also sending them. Just to create a demand for their business... I find it hard to believe that somebody actually opens these E-mails. But I guess it is my frustration with this issue which brings this conclusion.

How will this "war" between SPAM and the SPAM defence programs end? If this issue would not be so serious, it would be almost interesting to follow. As a counter measurement some home pages are programmed in such a manner that E-mails can not be collected automatically by SPAM programs. But those programs are already a step ahead and find the addresses anyway. SPAM filters look for particular suspicious words, so the SPAM programs automatically change a single character in the word every time and the mail will pass...

Well, I fear that for the next couple of years we probably will just have to learn to live with this problem and to argue that the benefits of having E-mail are just so much greater.

But who knows? Some day, in the distant future, your completely full E-mail inbox will really mean that either your business is going very well or that you are very popular.

Some day... 

Best Regards
Andrzej Wojtas (Ph.D.), Chief Editor MFN

andrzej@mfn.li

Author: Andrzej Wojtas (Ph.D.)