Thoughts on Spam

I guess because I post the company press releases (or used to) I get spammed more than most of you. It's up to 500 per day and sometimes 600. I hear people say "I have wonderful spam filters" followed by "of course, I have to check what the filters caught to see if something legitimate got caught by accident." Then why do you need or use filters?

I have spam filters too. I never, ever, check to see if something real got caught. But then, that 500-600 spams per day are the ones the filters do not catch. Takes me 1-2 minutes every morning to delete the spam since I left the office the day before and then all day every time Mr DSL delivers mail (every 20 minutes) most of it is spam. A few clicks and it's done. I don't like it, but there is nothing to be done about it, it's just part of the cost of Email. I know people who use "white lists" to only get email it. I really resent it when somebody asks me a game question and then expects me to go to some web site and fill out some form so I can answer his question. He could whitelist me before he asks.

Today I had a special joy. Some bunch of crooks used my email as the spoof return address for a major spam mailing, and I got way over 100 "delivery failed" notices with the same Cialis ad. Because I do send business Emails and now and then get one back "undelivered" and I need to know that, I had to open all 100+ notices and sure enough, ONE of them was a legitimate Email I had sent and that I really did need to know did not get through.

Sorry that I took an extra minute there. I just got another 20-minute email cycle with more "delivery failure notices". I wonder if this is going to be going on all day? Worse, for the rest of my life? Another hour or so and I'll start getting "drop dead you filthy spammer" emails from the ones that DID get through.

I am hardly an expert on spam, just a victim. I see banks I have never heard of asking me to confirm account information (criminal spam trying to steal my bank account), I hear from the Nigerians with their "money in an account we want to send to you" (so they can steal the money out of my account), ads for various things (so called "non-criminal spam advertising") spams designed to drive up stock prices (lots of those in the last two weeks), hot women in my home town looking for one-night stands, and more and more.

I was told a story once by somebody who is in a position to have known it to be true. I don't know if it is true or not, but it's a good story. Seems one day a bunch of government, military, industry, and business people were sitting around a table inventing the internet. Somebody said "Why don't we charge 1/10 of a penny per email. We can set up the system to give all of US a hundred bucks of free email a month. But if we set up the system to require an account to be debited, we will have control over what goes into the system." the others said it was too much bother and who could possibly abuse the system so why would they need control? Pity they didn't do that. These "send 40 million ads by Email" campaigns would be shut down if somebody had to invest a few thousand in sending each one.

Spam happens because spam works. Nobody would pay to send out spam if they were not getting buyers. I got a phone call once from a guy trying to sell spam advertising. Yes, amazing as that seems. Turns out he was a fan of one of my games and suddenly realized who he was talking to. We had actually met at a convention once. We had a rolicking good chat about spam. He said "I know you don't want to be a spam person, but let me tell you that for $500 to pay for outgoing spam I can guarantee you ten times as much in sales on your shopping cart. Moneyback guarantee. Of course, most of the games will be sold to peole who didn't know what they were buying, but 95% of those won't try to send it back." There are times i wonder if I could have gotten a lot of new business that way? oh well, let's never find out.