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“Subject: She said you raped
her.”
Gentlemen, that is an email
you open no matter how you’ve lived your life. I clicked it, to
discover an ad for low interest mortgages.
One might admire the
ingenuity of that on some level. It was a week before I considered
anything deeper than slapping the sender silly, but I did open it.
That is the first goal of “spam,” the bulk email that clogs the
Internet like so much cyber-cholesterol.
The subject lines are
usually easier on the blood pressure than the one that sent mine up
like Old Faithful, but all are designed to make you look. The
supposed topic often has nothing to do with the actual ad; if the
pitch isn’t for mortgages, chances are it’s a miracle drug promising
to make some body part bigger or smaller, depending on which one.
(I have a recurring fantasy in which spammers use their own
products but get it turned around and make the wrong things the
wrong size. One can dream.)
There was a time when I could
make an argument for tolerating this junk on First Amendment
grounds. I don’t mean porn or scams; it’s amazing how many deposed
African dictators need only my bank account number to move millions
of hot dollars. I’m less amused by the offers for Paris Hilton
videotapes that are as likely to end up in a child’s in-box as an
adult’s.
Porn aside, many of the ads
are no more obnoxious than the average beer commercial. There is no
right not to be offended, and there is still that pesky First
Amendment. What is different is that spam has evolved from free
speech and a petty nuisance to outright vandalism.
Some sources claim 40 percent
of all email is spam, though by my experience the number is probably
double that. Corporate estimates of the cost of computer memory and
Internet capacity chewed up by spam and the time spent dealing with
it runs into the billions of dollars. Thousands of frustrated
people have abandoned their email addresses under an avalanche of
ads; I’ve considered it myself but fear losing business contacts.
With the “National Do Not
Call Registry” putting the kibosh on most telemarketing calls,
politicians smell blood. Efforts to ban spam are as popular – and
effective – as outlawing mosquitoes. President Bush has signed
anti-spam legislation, several states have enacted their own laws,
and New York state attorney general Eliot Spitzer is making
headlines and scoring points with legal action to fight spam jam.
The public encourages these
efforts, though California’s own deposed leader couldn’t save his
job by signing one of the nation’s toughest spam laws last
September. Now I half expect to get email from Gray Davis asking
for my bank account number.
On other fronts, Microsoft is
suing spammers in the state of Washington. I give Microsoft a
better chance than the government because it truly understands the
Internet and has more money. “Spam filters,” software designed to
sift out unwanted email, can help but aren’t perfect; the filter at
one paper that carries this column seems to be picking off every
piece I send. Everyone’s a critic.
It all helps but what we
really need are people of action like Dave Barry, only nerdier.
During the debate over the National Do Not Call Registry, Barry ran
the phone number of the American Teleservices Association in his
nationally syndicated column and invited readers to reach out and
touch someone. Thousands did, until the group finally changed its
number.
I’d copy the Barry barrage
shamelessly if I thought it would work on spammers but they’re a lot
tougher to pin down. Still, someone out there must have the
technical know-how and enough free time to figure out how to force
feed spam to spammers.
A hopeful nation waits.
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