E-mail has become an absolutely awesome way to communicate. Messages and documents are almost instantly delivered. People can send and receive e-mail from practically anywhere in the world. No longer are the time consuming niceties of telephone calls always necessary (but let's not ignore those important communications altogether). Now, as Dragnet's Joe Friday used to say, 'just give me the facts ma'am." E-mail is a great boon to efficiency and productivity.
Now, here's the bad news. Unscrupulous marketers have, long ago, figured out the value of e-mail. Their message can reach millions of people at practically no cost. There's no need to print and mail expensive direct mail promotions. They can forget telemarketing and all the associated payroll and telephone costs. They can simply bombard everyone under the sun with their sales e-mails and play the numbers game. It's nothing for spammers to send out 5 or 10 million e-mails at a time.
This article is about spaming, how it works and what can be done to keep out intrusive e-mail and make sure you get the stuff you really need to see.
Spaming is simply the sending of unsolicited bulk e-mail to people who have not requested it. Spam is the actual e-mail. Spaming is almost as old as the Internet itself. It didn't take long for these unscrupulous marketers to discover a great way to reach lots of people for very little money. Think of it this way. You send out 10,000,000 e-mails advertising a $50.00 product. Only 1/10th of 1% respond to your pitch and only 5% of them actually purchase the product. Let's do the math. That means 10,000 people responded to the ad and 500 people actually purchased the product. 500 out of 10,000,000. That's .0005%. That's also $25,000.00 in sales for every spam e-mail campaign. These people do several each and every day. That's a lot of money. Spammers don't send e-mail to be annoying. They do it to make money and they do.
Despite all the well intentioned legislation, it's very hard to catch spammers. They send e-mails through multiple e-mail servers (many are located outside the United States) so the originating address is hidden. They regularly change these servers, so it is difficult to track their activities. They also use sub contractors who send spam on their behalf and receive commissions for their efforts. They are very technically savvy and, so far, have kept one step ahead of law enforcement and spam trackers.
E-mail addresses are the spammer's holy grail and they obtain them in many different ways. E-mail lists are available everywhere. Everyone has gotten spam e-mails advertising these lists. On the Internet, quantity is in, quality is out. It's just a big numbers game.
How do you get on spam e-mail lists? It's easy. Big Internet companies sell names they have legitimately collected from the unsuspecting who sign up for something at their site. I'm not here to accuse anybody, but two days after I signed up for my Yahoo account, I began receiving an additional 10 spam e-mails a day. The same thing happened after I activated an on-line trading account at an on-line brokerage firm.
There's more. Everywhere you turn, someone is probably trying to obtain your e-mail address for improper purposes. Every time you type in your e-mail address, there is the possibility it can end up with a spammer. Spy ware and ad ware that ended up in your computer can collect your e-mail address and, without your knowledge, send it to the list collectors. Once your address is on one list, it is traded and sold numerous times and eventually ends up on many spam lists.
The only way to stop spam is to make it unprofitable for the spammers to operate. The cynic in me says that probably isn't going to happen in my lifetime so we all need to be a little more proactive in greatly reducing and even eliminating the amount of spam we receive.
The first rule is, don't be click happy. Be more cautious about what links you actually click and quickly delete e-mails that look the least bit suspicious. Take a few minutes and read privacy statements and simply have nothing to do with companies or even individuals who do not specifically state that your e-mail address will be kept private or never be sold or traded. While some web sites simply don't tell the truth, I've found that an overwhelming majority are honest and reputable. They hate spam as much as you do and don't want their e-mails caught in your spam filters (more on these later). When ordering products on-line or subscribing to newsletters, make sure you UNCHECK the boxes that authorize the business to send you product announcements, updates and more. Not only will you receive more e-mail,
