Wanna hear something funny?
Two years ago, Bill Gates predicted that in two years' time the spam problem would be solved.
Time's up, Bill.
Now—wanna hear something even funnier?
Ryan Hamlin, the manager of Microsoft's anti-spam programs, says that, well, the spam problem has been solved.
Of course, like so many other issues nowadays, the real answer to whether spam is no longer a problem depends on what the definition of "solved" is.
To "solve" the problem for consumers in the short run doesn't require eliminating spam entirely, said Ryan Hamlin, the general manager who oversees the company's anti-spam programs. Rather, he said, the idea is to contain it to the point that its impact on in-boxes is minor.
In that way, Hamlin said, Gates' prediction has come true for people using the right tactics and advanced filtering technology. Microsoft's MSN Hotmail says it stops more than 95 percent of the spam that enters its system from reaching in-boxes. Yahoo says it's just as effective.
"If you are a consumer that's taking advantage of the technologies that exist ... then the spam problem for you is solved," Hamlin said. "Bill didn't say that there would be no spam. But he said the problem would be solved, and I think that is what we actually have accomplished."
There are, of course, just a couple of problems with that perspective.
FIrst, regardless of the amount of spam that any individual receives in his inbox, with spam making up about half of all email sent, the net's resources are still being strained and congested by the massive flow of unsolicited email, even if this is invisible to any one user. Someone pays for all this bandwidth, and you get one guess as to who that is.
Second, the "Yes, you too CAN-SPAM!" act of 2003 actually superceded tougher state laws, such as CA's opt-in law, making spamming officially legal in the US, and allows the spammer to dictate whatever mechanisms he wishes us to be obligated to follow in order to opt out, however convoluted or laced with executable-file, pop-up perils.
So now we get to read every blinkin' spam we get, then visit the sender's website, then negotiate our way through the pop-ups to find the opt-out mechanism? Right. That certainly works for me.
I could list many other issues that argue that spam is an ongoing problem and becoming worse all the time, but I want to cut to the issue that bugs me the most.
You see, being a believer in individual empowerment and liberty, I'd rather take matters into my own hands than have the Feds try to solve the problem for me, thereby making it worse than it already was. Hamlin is right about one thing: technology has made one aspect of spam, that is, the high volume of it in my inbox, much more manageable than it was two years ago.
But even highly effective Bayesian filtering algorithms, no matter how sophisticated, have one important weakness that has not been conquered, namely, that every now and then a legitimate email message will be tossed into the spam can. The manufacturers of anti-spam tools therefore admonish all users to occasionally inspect their spam folders for such legitimate email.
Now think about that for just a minute. If I had never set up any spam filters I would have to read through all that spam in search of legitimate email.
I spent hours setting up those filters precisely to avoid doing that. And now I have to do it anyway? Are you bloody kidding me?
The bottom line is that I have two choices: enjoy my freedom from spam along with the nagging knowledge that some important communication I have been expecting could have already come, but have been accidentally bozo-binned, OR I can search through all my spam manually to be sure this hasn't happened, which essentially neutralizes any advantage the anti-spam tool promised to start with.
Yes, I know that if I'm expecting an important message from, say, Creative Technical Services, I can "whitelist" them in my filters ensuring (usually, if the software has no bugs) that I get any emails from them. But this means that I can never be sure of receiving email from anyone who has never communicated with me before, or whom I have never taken the trouble to specifically whitelist. And frankly, email from previously unknown readers is pretty danged important to me.
What does it tell someone when he takes the trouble to email me and then receives no reply? That I don't value his time or the fact that he's a reader. This is hardly the message I want to send to people that take the time and trouble to email.
And what may be as bad is that this cuts both ways—I may never know whether that email I sent to Glenn Reynolds, or Michelle Malkin, or Greyhawk, or any other big-name bloggers who don't really know me, really made a poor impression or if he¹ simply never saw it at all. If it was never acknowledged, I'll never know for sure.
To sum up, as long as I lose one—just one—legitimate email because I have been forced to filter them all, it's the spammers' fault that I lost it, but I and the sender pay the price. The spammer could care less.
And I resent that. A lot.
(Thanks again to Greyhawk for the Open Post!)
cerdipity linked with Spam, spam, spam, spam
¹ Just a brief reminder that I usually avoid the use of "he/she" in favor of the generic "he" for reasons of style and brevity. No chauvinism or sexist porcinism is involved.
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