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Volume 3 Number 31 December
2, 2005 |
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Treason's greetings Friends don't betray friends to spammers OK, first things first. "Treason" may seem like a strong word to use when referring to spam, but if you read the mail I get every time I write about spam, you'd see that some people consider unsolicited commercial e-mail just slightly more evil than actual treason. It drives some folks into a mouth-foaming, spittle-flying frenzy. Anyhoo, "treason" gets attention, which is the main function of headlines. So, here we are. What got me thinking about this is the fact I have finally cleaned out the emails that informed me that a well-meaning friend had sent me an "E-Card" to wish me the best at Thanksgiving. And I'm assuming the Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year's versions will be along shortly. All I have to do is click on a URL in the e-mail to be taken to the card. Now, I have to admit, the thought is nice. And there is something peaceful about listening to a synthesized version of "It's a Gift to be Simple," while fruits and vegetables fly around my computer screen to arrange themselves into a turkey. Sometimes, it's a Pilgrim -- or at least what greeting-card artists mistakenly seem to think Pilgrims looked like --but mostly, it's a turkey. At least it's peaceful the first time. Not so much on the second iteration. And, by Number 10, it starts to get to you -- much like the ten-thousandth rendition of "It's a Small World After All." (For those of you who have suffered through that special hell at MouseWorld.) The greeting itself isn't so bad. As I said, I appreciate the thought and the well-meaning friends. What concerns me is that my friend has given my e-mail address to a third party, with whom I have no special relationship and who therefore feels no responsibility toward me. That bothers the hell out of me. What bothers me more is that some of these third parties actually keep track of whether I respond to their e-mail or not. This year, I just decided to ignore some of the Thanksgiving greetings, and was bombarded with another round of emails to "remind me" that I had neglected to click through to the Web site to view the "vegetables-into-turkey" routine that my friend desperately wanted me to see. This e-mail didn't come from my friend, but from the card people who were importuning me at my friend's behest. This tells me that they're keeping track. At the end of the season, the card people not only have a whole pile of what they assume are active e-mail addresses, they also know who's "naughty" and who's "nice." The nice people are the ones who actually click-through. Anyone who has any familiarity with the direct mail business -- whether "snail" or "e" -- knows that addresses are gold. Active addresses are platinum. And, addresses of people who will "click through" or respond are a treasure beyond price. I'm not accusing any particular e-card purveyor of spamming, but I do have to ask a couple of questions. The first is: What's in it for them? They go through the trouble of designing and producing the card. Then they collect the e-mail addresses. Then they send out the emails. They also have a tracking system to see who responds, and they send out follow up-emails to those who don't. And, they provide the bandwidth for all the people who do go to see the production. You could try to argue that they do this out of the goodness of their hearts, but the cynic, or rather realist, in me says: "Nah." My second question is what you would do if you had a list of five million e-mail addresses that you assume are active, mostly because they don't bounce back to you, and another list of two million people who actually clicked through to a Web site when instructed to? Especially if you came by those addresses fair and square and made no direct representation to the address owners that you would keep them to yourself. I think I'm a pretty ethical guy. I would never betray a friend. But if I were sitting on a treasure trove like that, something that could ensure a comfortable retirement starting right now, there's no telling what I would do. (And don't look at me like that, you'd think about the same thing.) I don't know what the going rate is, but I assume that list could be sold for a hefty price -- or at least rented out for a slightly lower hefty price. It could also be passed off to a subsidiary of the online card company, and that subsidiary could be actively engaged in direct e-mail marketing. You could get spammed from your friend's card and not even realize it. I consider myself fortunate. My spam intake is limited. I attribute this to three things. My ISP simply filters out a lot of obvious spam. I have an anti-spam program that does a yeoman's job of trapping junk. And I'm pretty parsimonious with my e-mail address. I give it out only to people I trust and use my Emailias service for anyone who is questionable. My spam these days consists of people trying to interest me in stocks -- or as they put it "stox" -- a few online prescription offers, and, for some totally unknown reason, a proliferation of spam in Russian. The last one totally mystifies me. I get upward of seven or eight a day. They're all in Russian, which I don't read. All the addresses and headers are forged. I have no idea what they are selling, and fortunately my spam filter puts them all in their place. I continue to be mystified as to why people who have broken the law, who have deceived me by forging headers and addresses, and who disguise their true identity, think I will take their stock recommendations -- or, sillier still, think that I will go to their Web site and give them my credit card number. They have proven from the get-go that they are dishonest and they want me to do business with them. Some people must be that stupid, I guess, or the spammers wouldn't bother. Overall, my spam load is lower than most people. I have friends who, when I ask them if they've gotten something I sent, tell me they didn't get to it because they have 400 emails from yesterday still to go through. No one should have 400 emails to go through. This is why it bothers me when those same friends, who I still insist are well-meaning, throw my address around with wild abandon. It's not just the greeting cards, although they abound at this time of year, and are what got me started on this line of thought. There is a similar phenomenon with friends who are reading an interesting article and want to clue you in. So, they click on the "Send this story to a friend" icon, which then gives your e-mail address to whatever site they're reading the story on. Again, my question is: What these sites do with all the addresses they collect? Another address-collection scheme comes with online contests. You can enter the contest -- which I do using an Emailias address, and never win anything -- but then they want to give you "extra chances," which you can get simply by turning in five of your friends and giving their addresses to the contest operator. What do they do with all these addresses they get from the "extra chances?" And the thing that drives me absolutely bonkers is the Forward-forward-forward Syndrome. You get an e-mail from a friend saying something like "This is cute." And you have to click on an attachment. That attachment allows you to click on another attachment. And that attachment takes you to another attachment. Finally, like unpeeling an onion, you get to whatever was "cute," but is often something you saw online in 1995 or thereabouts. For some reason AOL people seem particularly prone to this disease. Other people do it too, but the AOLers are the worst. It may come from the fact that AOL appeals mostly to people who aren't particularly computer- or Internet-savvy. Usually, I just don't bother opening anything with a "FW: FW: FW: FW: FW:" in the subject line, but two things bother me. First, I wonder if the people who received the original e-mail know that their address is now being circulated to thousands of people. Do the math. If the original sender sent it to 10 people and they all sent it to 10 people, who quickly forward it to 10 people, who dutifully sent it on to 10 people, who obligingly sent it to . . . We're approaching 100,000 people who now have the original list of addresses, and any one of those 100,000 could harvesting addresses for nefarious purposes. What bothers me more, however, is that my address is now on that email, whether I read it or not, and I shudder at the thought of the joke (poem, prayer, inspirational message, funny photo, whatever) falling into the hands of a spammer. I have asked people not to do it. I have showed them how to cut and paste, instead of forward, but to no avail. This has led me to become more parsimonious with my real e-mail address. These days I simply don't give it to anyone I consider not "Internet savvy." So, your task this holiday season is to educate two (or more) people about the dangers of betraying friends' e-mail addresses to third parties and to encourage them to educate two (or more) other people. For my part, I will use my anti-spam program to "bounce" my address back to the online card people, informing them that my address is no longer active. Yes, that's technically a lie -- and I don't really care. . |
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© Copyright 2005 Carlton Vogt |