Spam wars Unwanted e-mail
Wren, Celia
MEDIA Celia Wren SPAM WARS Battling the relentless Web tide As if generated by some cyber-sorcerer's apprentice, they seem more numerous each day. "After Christmas blowout sale the tiniest remote...
...Sometimes the appeals are humdrum ("Full-color business cards at no cost don't miss out...
...Looking for more betting action...
...Do you think your pet has star potential...
...Lose 14 pounds in a week...
...You too can name a star for someone very special to you...
...What these figures do not measure or explain, of course, is the subjective dimension the pent-up fury experienced by the helpless spam recipient...
...At least I know that I am not alone...
...The more frustrated I get, the less spam signifies anything other than its own obnoxious existence...
...a few unsought e-mails should hardly make me bat an eye...
...Postal Service delivery and throw out an equivalent number of envelopes...
...Shoot the spams before they reach your computer," the promotional text urges, "and try to get Sid at the same time...
...But frequently it's better not to think too hard about the offer, as with the recent promo for that waterproof, vibrating personal massager in the form of a rubber duck ("Click here to see the video...
...When I toss a postmarked overture from a credit card company into the dustbin, I know I am wasting the sender's money...
...In other dismaying analyses, the antispam software maker Brightmail predicted that in 2003, 40 percent of e-mail will consist of spam, and a company called Ferris Research estimated that the problem now costs U.S...
...Whatever the aesthetic overtones, spam inspires more rage in me than telemarketing calls...
...So why does spam to extend the food metaphor a little leave a more bitter taste...
...No wonder a U.K.-based Web application business has posted on its Web site a game called Spamwars...
...After Christmas blowout sale the tiniest remote control cars ever made...
...They are tireless and insolent, these unsolicited commercial e-mails that blight the information age and have come to be know as spam...
...In a small way, I have achieved revenge...
...Get your FREE cold & flu sample now...
...When, with a few deft dicks of my mouse, I obliterate an appeal from an online flower store ("Free glass vase...
...The wild beast resumes its sway within us," Hazlitt wrote, describing the manner in which humans surrender to wrath, the way I do when I open my spam-riddled e-mail each morning...
...Spam, on the other hand, is absurdly cheap...
...So why is it more aggravating to click and trash three or four such messages than to sort through the day's U.S...
...But these qualities of secrecy and directness, in the case of unsolicited commercial messages, gain a sinister aura...
...By contrast, by the time a three-dimensional catalogue or envelope reaches the reproduction Victorian mailbox my decor-conscious husband recently installed, the item has passed through the machinery of the Postal Service and the hands of several postal workers...
...Those transactions make that piece of mail a known entity unwelcome, but unthreatening...
...That war will only heat up in the future, if recent statistics are any indication...
...Even on my most efficient days, I can hardly argue that my workplace performance suffers noticeably from the squandering of 4.5 seconds here or there...
...a recent Associated Press article reported that a mere $250 could launch a million spams...
...We feel like hunting animals...the heart rouses itself in its native lair, and utters a wild cry of joy, at being restored once more to freedom...
...Sometimes they hint at a melodramatic backstory the crime that led to the invitation to "Bid now on these seized goods...
...A piece of spam bears a distinct resemblance to a germ...
...sometimes they are pathetic ("Needed: Dogs and Cats for Movies...
...One answer relates to a fact that a friend pointed out to me after he'd wooed a girlfriend with electronic messages: E-mail is an intrinsically intimate medium...
...So my anger opens up a small deliverance along the lines William Ha-zlitt evoked in his 1826 essay "On the Pleasure of Hating...
...The content seems to unfurl from the sender into your consciousness without mediation...
...And, given the product-hawking that barrages my every waking hour ads on TV, on the sides of bus stops, etc...
...the increase, the firm warned, threatens the viability of e-mail as a form of communication...
...Dealing with hard-copy junk mail takes longer, consumes real caloric energy, and frequently entails paper cuts...
...So, like Sisyphus rolling his stone uphill, I painstakingly clean out my e-mail in box, only to find it filled again the next time I look: "Single and looking to meet new people...
...If such factors go part way toward explaining why spam is psychologically traumatic, it would be foolish to overlook the economics...
...Perhaps the game points to a faint comfort: The faster unsolicited messages fleet into my in box, the less likely I am to notice what they are trying to sell...
...businesses about $9 billion a year...
...I can at least slam the phone down on callers, and hope I've hurt their feelings...
...I am wreaking virtually no financial damage...
...You can send one and get one, and no one need know...
...In some way, the world at large has shared my burden...
...Make a fortune on eBay...
...In the game, located at http://www.elated.com/spamwars, one battles a villain called Sid the spammer...
...That $9-billion figure takes into account variables like "consumption of bandwidth" and "loss of worker productivity" (the average worker, according to Ferris's analysts, wastes 4.5 seconds on each morsel of spam...
...Spam precludes retaliation clicking on that "unsubscribe" link, I've been told, is likely to increase the flow of unsolicited messages...
...In mid-January, in fact, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hosted a conference of hundreds of computer experts, all intent on waging war against spam...
...According to an alert issued a few weeks ago by the e-mail security firm Postini, which monitors about 40 million e-mails a day, the flood of spam surged by 150 percent in 2002...
Vol. 130 • February 2003 • No. 3
