Spam

Spammers have become very creative. They now send under all types of false pretenses to get you to open the email. It amazes me how much creativity they have. Why don’t they use their creativity in constructive ways? Don’t you think they would make more money if they used their mind in something constructive way rather than sinister ways? You wonder what is the thought process that goes into the mind of a person who gets up everyday in the morning and goes to work to figure out how to annoy the world with emails; in short screw the world. It has to be very degrading! And why would you want to always be on the wrong side of the law. You would think that after doing it once or twice you would give up and say this is too hard and I need to find gainful employment where I can hold my head high. I also wonder how they describe their job. Say if they are at a party or social event and someone asks what do you do for a living, how must they respond. Obviously, they hide what they truly do and come up with some politically correct explanation. I used to get emails that were just plain flat spam. Once the ISP’s started blocking them then they started becoming more creative. They started sending emails looking like bounced emails. So you are curious to open to see which email bounced. Only to find an ad. I don’t worry anymore about bounced emails. I just forward the bounced email to ‘Find at Switch email dot com’ and if it is genuine they find me the new email address. Then the spammers started sending emails with attachments. Again, preying on your curiosity to open and see what is in the attachment. Usually these attachments are viruses or spyware cleverly disguised as a ‘offer letter’ or ‘bank statement’. I never open any attachments if unknown to me. Then they started sending emails with proper names. I think they just have a table of popular first names and last names, which they randomly mix and send emails. The theory being that you are bound to find some name that you are familiar and may think that the email is from a known person. For example: You may get a spam email with sender’s name as ‘Rick Smith’. You are bound to know a ‘Rick’ in your life. You may not remember the person’s last name and in your nostalgia open the email. Clever isn’t it? I think this whole problem can be resolved very easily if there is a simple rule passed. All emails are opt-out unless you have a specific opt-in from the person. I know there are opt-in lists etc. I am going beyond that. Say you open an email account. By default it is banned from getting any unsolicited email till you designate an ‘allow’ list. There should be a national ‘allow’ list maintained by email providers. So say I want to allow Delta airlines to send me email, I designate at their website and I designate on my allow list that usually my ISP carries. Now no emails are allowed in unless I designate. You might say what about my long lost friend who sends me an email and is not on my ‘allow’ list. Very simple. He or she is sending one email. Your ISP knows that it is clearly not a spammer who sends out large volumes. So it is ok to send emails through. Some ISPs are doing something similar but I feel the whole problem can be truly alleviated if we think big and have a national ‘allow’ list that all ISPs update regularly. It is for the ISPs benefit too to identify spammers who abuse their network. The problem can only be solved if it is handled across the board with the basic premise that your email is confidential till you allow access! Bob Young writes for Switchemail.com. He can be reached at administrator at Switchemail.com.