Tuesday, February 01, 2005
The Joy of Spam
The New York Times > Technology > Law Barring Junk E-Mail Allows a Flood Instead
Interesting article from today's New York Times on the continued rise in spam even after (or because of?) CAN SPAM. A few things jump out: who's not using spam filters these days? Who's not using firewalls to protect their computers from "zombifaction?" And who the heck are those 2,000 people buying $50 herbal supplements in response to spam?
Of course, spam has hurt b2b. We run several opt-in e-newsletters, which are routinely trapped in spam filters. The filters make subscribing hard, since the confirmation email also gets trapped in the filter.
We'll be migrating those e-newsletters over time to blog formats, and teaching our customers how to use newsreaders (or My Yahoo, as I do).
Perhaps someone will figure out an interesting business in providing a "verisign" for email addresses--a preconfirmed, researched and monitored email address, with a certificate which allows ISPs to accept email from that address? I'd pay money for such a certification.
UPDATE: See this piece from the Cato Institute almost two years ago.
Comments
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Interesting article from today's New York Times on the continued rise in spam even after (or because of?) CAN SPAM. A few things jump out: who's not using spam filters these days? Who's not using firewalls to protect their computers from "zombifaction?" And who the heck are those 2,000 people buying $50 herbal supplements in response to spam?
Of course, spam has hurt b2b. We run several opt-in e-newsletters, which are routinely trapped in spam filters. The filters make subscribing hard, since the confirmation email also gets trapped in the filter.
We'll be migrating those e-newsletters over time to blog formats, and teaching our customers how to use newsreaders (or My Yahoo, as I do).
Perhaps someone will figure out an interesting business in providing a "verisign" for email addresses--a preconfirmed, researched and monitored email address, with a certificate which allows ISPs to accept email from that address? I'd pay money for such a certification.
UPDATE: See this piece from the Cato Institute almost two years ago.
