Spam
Part 2
Perhaps it's happened to you: You're browsing the web page of a business and decide you want to contact them. Maybe you've dealt with them in the past and are interested in doing more or perhaps you're trying to contact them for the first time. You look for a mail link so you can send a quick email but there doesn't seem to be one on their home page. So you try a sub-page. And another. And another. After searching their site for what seems an eternity you can't find anything and are forced to give up.
If you're the person doing the searching you just lost valuable time which could have been spent productively. If you're the business with the web page, you may have just lost a sale. And the surprising reason for all this is junk email or spam.
The businesses that use automated systems to send out millions of email advertisements also use automated software to build their mailing lists and one of the techniques they use is the scanning of web pages for mail links.
Forced into Hiding
If you have a web page with your email address on it, it's a safe bet you'll receive junk mail. And the longer your address is out there the more mailing lists it will get on and the more junk you'll receive. For businesses that have been around for a long time, this could mean vast amounts of rubbish in their mailboxes alongside the legitimate messages from their customers and potential customers. The junk can even exceed the capacity of the inbox and cause important messages to be lost (which represents more lost revenue). As a result, many businesses have been forced to remove their email addresses from their web pages and another blow is dealt to the fledgling industry of Internet commerce.
Although the proponents of bulk email often trumpet the low cost of their practice, to both the sender and the recipient, the real costs are hidden and are far greater than is widely recognized.
In the case of the email address on the web page, customers pay because they can't reach the people with whom they want to do business and businesses pay because they lose customers. It is technically possible (though much more awkward for the user) to put a form on a web page in place of a mail link, but many small businesses lack the technical expertise or budget for this and moreover there's no reason why they should be forced to do so by someone else's abuse of the email system.
One of the most significant costs is probably time. It may be an old cliché, but time really is money for most people and junk email wastes it in a variety of insidious ways.
Unlisted
If you want to contact someone whose email address you don't have-perhaps an old friend you haven't seen for a long time-you can do a search through any of several Internet "white pages" services. But if your friend has been hit hard with bulk email junk it's quite likely that he or she has had their address removed from these databases or taken steps to avoid ever getting it listed in the first place. It's cost you valuable time for a fruitless search and it's cost your friend contact with someone from whom they would probably like to hear.
Delayed
Even if you do find an email address for which you've been searching, the bulk emailers have made sure you're not finished paying yet. How long will it take your message to get through? (Is the information you're sending time sensitive?) Will the message get through at all? Junk mail deluges have slowed down and even crashed servers in the past [1, 2 & 9] and unless the situation changes they will inevitably be doing it again. And if you're doing something more serious than tracking down lost friends, the delays and loss of reliability due to bulk emailings can severely limit the usefulness of email for promoting commerce on the Internet.
Blocked
Some Internet Service Providers are responding to the complaints of their customers by blocking off the domains of the worst junk mail offenders entirely. Sometimes legitimate mail gets blocked along with the junk [3 & 9], which is an inconvenience for personal correspondents but a serious handicap to someone trying to use the Internet for a business.
Ignored or Deleted
If your email does get through, can you be sure it will be read? Amidst a torrent of bulk email rubbish with subject lines like "Hello", "What's up?" and "Here is the information you requested", many legitimate messages get inadvertently deleted or overlooked. With some messages the cost may just be wasted time on the part of the sender and a lost message for the recipient. But with others it's lost business and lost revenue.
Scared Off
The prospect of being inundated with junk email is actually threatening to become a problem that keeps people and businesses from getting on the Internet or drives them off after a short time [9 & 10]. This is especially true for the nascent wireless Internet Service market [4] where, unlike standard phone services, customers pay by the minute for their connect time. The cost of Unsolicited Bulk Email will be enourmous to these netizens. The problem has become so severe that people new to the Internet are now sometimes advised not to participate in online discussions at all! [11]
Crashing Businesses and Computers
Subject lines aren't the only outlet for deception available to junk mailers: they typically forge the information in the message headers which are supposed to indicate from whom the mail has originated and what path it has taken to reach you. These forgeries are used to prevent complaints from reaching the actual sender of the junk mail, but they often misdirect these complaints to legitimate businesses or Internet users who have nothing to do with it. There have been cases in which small businesses have been virtually shut down while dealing with the results of such forgeries [5 & 6] and large businesses can end up spending great sums of money trying to repair the damage done in this manner [7, 8 & 9]. If you do business with one of these companies, you're helping pay for their additional overhead.
You Pay the Tab
One overhead bill to which you will certainly be contributing is that of your Internet Service Provider. The creation and maintenance of spam filters, the time spent dealing with overloaded or crashed servers, responding to complaints caused by junk mail (including forgeries that originate elsewhere); these are all activities that consume the time of highly skilled and well paid professionals. Hardware must often be upgraded to handle the loads imposed by spam.[9] Who funds all this? You and I do.
But wait, there's more!
…or at least there will be.
There are now approximately 25 million subscribers to the top 53 online services, according to a report recently published by Cowles/Simba, and approximately 20 million small businesses in the United States, according to the Small Business Administration.
Imagine that 50% of those small businesses decide to get into bulk email advertising. If they send 100,000 emails each, that's 1,000,000,000,000 total. If about 50% of the online subscribers are on mailing lists--leaving out those whose addresses won't be harvested because they use the Internet just for email and web surfing (as opposed to newsgroups, IRC and setting up their own web pages) -- that's about 80,000 emails per address. Of course that's for just one mailing. If these advertisers send the same amount on a weekly basis, that would make over 300,000 email ads per month in your inbox.
On the bright side...
There are certainly more than 25 million Internet users in the U.S. because the figure cited above leaves out .mil, .edu and .gov domains, so the 80,000 and 300,000 figures would be diluted somewhat. But probably not by much (10%?).
...But on the other hand
It's entirely possible that, if bulk email does catch on, more than 50% of small businesses would use it, due to its low cost. It's also possible that there would be medium and large businesses using bulk email. It's very likely that the mailings would be much bigger than 100,000 (the smallest address lists commonly advertised typically claim several million addresses). The figures from the SBA represent just legitimate small businesses, rather than the MLM scheme, pyramid scam, laundry disc fraud, porno web site, etc. spew that comprises the majority of bulk email ads today. Therefore these numbers would be added to the present volume of bulk email rather than replacing it.
Crashing Businesses and Computers
These factors would greatly increase the 80,000/300,000 numbers, more than offsetting my underestimation of total Internet users. Unsolicited Bulk email currently costs ISPs tens of millions of dollars a month--approximately $2.00 per month per customer [9] and the trend appears to be increasing. The 25 million subscriber estimate would put the national price tag at $600,000,000 per year--paid almost entirely by the recipients/victims of spam. Unless something is done to turn back the tide of Unsolicited Bulk Email, Internet commerce will continue to face these unnecessary roadblocks.
References:
[1] "Spam Clogs Netcom Lines",
CNET News, 29 April, 1997 - http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,10204,00.html
[2] "Spam Slows WorldNet Mail",
CNET News, 16 July, 1997 - http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,12512,00.html
[3] "Spam Nets Catching Innocents", CNET News,
04 September, 1997 - http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,13966,00.html
[4] "Mobile Users Fear Wireless Spam",
TechWeb, 01 April, 1998 - http://techweb3.web.cerf.net/shopper/news/story/TWB19980401S0013
[5] "E-mail Mishap Halts Genealogy Service",
Atlanta Constitution, 14 May, 1997
[6] "Net Crime Begs Questions: Who to Call?",
CNET News, August 5, 1997 - http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,13141,00.html
[7] "Spam Forged, Samsung Says",
CNET News,12 August, 1997 - http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,13307,00.html
[8] "Spam Attacks Send Angry Firms to Court",
Computerworld, 18 August, 1997 - http://cwlive.cw.com:8080/home/print9497.nsf/All/SL33spam2
[9] "Spam Costs Internet Millions Every Month",
TechWeb, 01 April, 1998 - http://www.techweb.com/se/directlink.cgi?INW19980504S0003 Highly recommended article!
[10] "Survey Warns of Spam in U.K. ",
CNET News, 26 April, 1998 - http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,21493,00.html?st.ne.fd.mdh
[11] "To Avoid Junk E-mail On the Internet, Keep a Low Profile",
Christian Science Monitor, 03 June 1998 - http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1998/06/03/fp13s2-csm.htm