May 31

Written by: Rachael Dalton-Taggart
5/31/2006 5:43 AM 

I just received this rather surprising spam email which turned out to be an ad for weight loss pills. But it amused me in a morbid kind of way and also got me thinking about spam email.

First - the frustration. According to my rather heavy-weight spam killers, 70% of the email I receive is being blocked as real spam. And it is. I cruise through my spam killer web site and delete all of it, consistently. Don't they get it? I am not in need of organ enhancements, weight loss pills, magic love-life pills and so on. Rick Stavanja's definition of insantiy in 'repeating the same action again and again and expecting a different outcome.'
But then it gets me thinking: are people responding to these spam scams? Is it actually working for some? I have seen no statistics that affirm any of those thoughts, but given the amount of spam we receive, it has to be working right? (shudder).

Now I don't mind receiving spam relevant to my industry - it is useful to see who is promoting whatever new/free/trial 3D CAD product or plug-in. I love receiving my Borders Books offers via 'spam'. But I object to being constantly asked if my sex life is good enough. Really! Stop asking!

More creepy - some spams have recently been getting through my (paid-for) spam killers. How is that? Is there really a real person behind some of these, who is responding to the barrier? Or did some bright programmer simply develop code to break through?

Anyway, what this all means is that I will be forced to spend yet more time fighting off spam, getting cleverer about avoiding it, and finding new technologies that help. I would rather be earning money than screwing around with this kind of business problem.