In
this article we discuss what spam
is and where it came from.
What is spam email or computer spam?
Well unless you’ve been living
under a rock in the Appalachians,
you have at least some semblance
of knowledge about spam. The current
accepted definition of what spam
is with regards to email: Unsolicited
Commercial Email, less commonly
known as junk mail.
Why spam? Why not sludge, refuse
or muck? Well they are all fitting
descriptions, but netizens chose
spam, why? Apparently there are
at least 2 theories of where this
is derived from; the first is a
reference to a Monty Python skit
in which the only thing a particular
restaurant served was spam derivatives.
The song associated with the skit
repeated the word “spam”
hundreds of times. The time the
word was coined (mid 80s) apparently
at that time there were few people
using the internet that did not
appreciate Monty Python’s
style of humor.
The other less popular theory is
that “spam” was the
word used for the sound effect for
a cook slopping food on a plate
in the Sad Sack cartoons (1940s).
Either theory is plausible, and
I am fairly sure that we will not
be able to resolve exactly the reason
for the coinage unless we get the
spammers to promise to stop sending
it as soon as the issue is resolved.
Of course, I don’t think I
would take the word of a spammer,
I mean, they haven’t really
made a name for themselves in honesty.
So what is it about spam that makes
everyone cringe with a face like
they just smelled dung? Is it the
invasion of privacy? Is it the content
of the spam message? Personally
I find it insulting that someone
would infer that I was so daft as
to respond to one of those offers.
Sure one could argue that they are
not making a statement about the
mental capacity of the recipient,
but rather, that they are just blindly
sending the emails with no regard
to the destination. That is of course
just as deplorable, knowing that
the vast majority of the recipients
loathe the sender for their actions
and continuing to act in this way,
shows us the true character of these
individuals. For me, this is the
reason I detest them, shear incompatibility
with society.
Maybe you are one of the select
few that does not receive gratuitous
amounts of spam email. Let me be
the first to congratulate you on
your excellent fortune, you must
have rescued several busloads full
of nuns in a past life to avoid
this fate. However, don’t
expect your invulnerability to last
forever. You may not be a target
now, but all it takes is one slip
up, one mistake and you’ll
be sitting back like the rest of
use reminiscing about the days when
you could actually use your email.
So why is it that if everyone hates
spam so much that we aren’t
putting a stop to it? It is estimated
that spam cost companies $400 per
user per year, so how come big business
has not pulled this weed from the
garden yet? The answer is capitalism.
As long as it can be profitable
to mass send emails and lobby for
ineffective spam legislations, spammers
will exist. They have no morals,
no ethical standards to adhere to,
and they already break the law in
multiple places, it seems the only
real deterrent would be financial.
There have been several proposals
to offset the extremely lob sided
scales that this issue rests on.
On one hand we have marketers that
want to annoy people incessantly
until you buy their product, whilst
paying virtually nothing in expenses.
On the other hand you have millions
of mail enabled people that would
like nothing more than to check
a spam free mailbox for once.
So what can be done? What if you
actually had to pay something to
send an email? How quickly would
the ever flowing spam well dry up
when they had to pay a penny for
every recipient? What if to send
an email you had to be an authorized
individual, and much like a license,
any infractions could get that authorization
revoked? What if for every email
you wanted to send your computer
had to work out an extremely complex
math equation that would take several
seconds to complete? These are just
a handful of the proposals put forth
to the deal with this gunk we call
spam.
Hopefully for us all something will
come into effect and make this whole
spam issue just another bad episode
in our past. If history has taught
us anything, it has taught us that
within every society there are leeches
and that a social organism cannot
thrive in their presence.
Thank you, and remember to take
care and have fun.
Protect
Yourself from Spam Email - Click
Here
Back
to Articles Home
