I have 141 messages in my spam folder.
Most of those messages are less than 24 hours old.
So, if I spent just 5 seconds reading the sender and title of each message, that is 11 minutes and 45 seconds per day to make sure that I don't lose an important message in the deluge of spam.
Now expand this. 11.75 * 5 days a week * 52 weeks a year. That's 3055 minutes, or 51 hours.
At the last desk job I worked at, I made $25 an hour. That's a cost of $1,275 to my employer for one year of spam.
There were over 200 employees in my company.
That's a cost of $255,000 PER YEAR. In one company. It only takes 5 companies the size of the one I worked for, and this cost is well over a million dollars. 5000 companies, and we're talking over a billion dollars a year in lost productivity because of spam.
Free speech was never meant to apply to advertising. That's why we can't sell cigarettes on TV and why we can't show naked women on billboards. People certainly shouldn't be allowed to advertise porn, drugs, and pirated software by e-mail, where kids might read them, and where it costs employers billions of dollars anually.
It's high time to fix this problem, once and for all, both on the legal front (simply outlaw unsolicited e-mail, period. None of this opt-out stuff. If you don't explicitly ask for it, it's spam.) and on the technology front: SMTP and POP3 need to be seriously revamped. We need new ways to handle the conversation to ensure that the message is legit.
I propose:
1. ISP's do not allow any outbound e-mail except through their servers. This will stop spambots.
2. Services like GMail and Yahoo Mail provide some sort of validation system that uniquely identifies the sender. Use a credit card, use a cell phone, or use snail mail. I don't care, as long as the ID is somewhat reliable.
3. Any ISP that facilitates spam be cut off from the Internet. Period.
We're losing billions of dollars to this problem. Let's fix it once and for all!
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3 comments:
I just noticed your post. You are 100% correct. There is a solution on the horizon. You've almost got it right regarding ID, but ID doesn't really work in the long hall.
Think about how many legitimate businesses there are in the world, and the consequence of giving each one just 1 shot at dumping a message into your inbox. The web is global and inbox owners need complete control. Personal Value Control.
Ask your self this; why do major publishers (NY Times, WSJ) and web portals (Google, Sports Illustrated etc...) not suffer from irrelevant content overload? Ah, because these properties have the resources to implement value control mechanisms.
Well - FYI - your inbox, and cell phone, and PDA, and VoIP line, are all properties. And, in case you've not noticed, they are valuable properties - that's why you get spam in the first place.
Take a look at this post and follow the train of thought - The Definition of Spam
Cheers!
Frank
Not really anonymous as you can see. Does anyone really need another account - anywhere?
So your idea is to wipe out all the anonymity and freedom that the internet provides, in times where (governmental) surveillance is growing rapidely? Sorry, this can't be the right way. But you're right, it's a huge problem.
How much are we willing to pay for that freedom?
IPv6 is already in play. It will eventually make it down to the desktop level no matter what we do. The simple truth is that we NEED IPv6 because we're soon going to run out of IP addresses.
As to anonymity: I don't WANT anonymous people sending me e-mail. That's the whole point!
Besides - your IP address is already being tracked. If you think you have any anonymity as it is, you're fooling yourself.
All IPv6 will do is guarantee that your IP doesn't change and that your address isn't being faked. This goes a long way towards ensuring the security of networked communications.
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