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Most people agree that spam in all its forms (email, voice-over IP spam, instant message spam, mobile text message spam etc.) is something that is never going to be eradicated. Despite its low response rates, spam is a far cheaper method of targeting your market. In theory, many argue that it's an ineffective method of marketing; in practice, however the fact that most spammers can charge their customers very little to deliver it means that they only need a 1 in 100,000 rate of success.
The cost of spamming is huge both in terms of actual costs associated with dealing with it and the irritation it causes us. Organisations have to invest money and time defending themselves from attack and employees waste time clearing it from their inboxes. So what's the answer? Anti-spam laws are aiming to raise the cost of spamming so it no longer becomes a viable option. Spam filters raise the costs because more messages have to be sent before it is read.
The real problem of spamming is that for every attack that is stopped, another is waiting in the wings to wreak yet more havoc. In 2004, Bill Gates declared that spamming would be beaten in 2 year's time. Only at the beginning of this month, did The New York Times report that nearly 90 per cent of all emails were spam. Perhaps the answer is to tolerate spam - install the software, filter it out and don't read it. |
