I thought Spam went out of fashion?

As consumers we have the not inconsiderable burden of choosing where to spend our money. This dilemma is presented on a daily basis as we go about normal pursuits and routines. A sizeable faction of retailers and salesman are not content with letting the money fall from our purse in good time however, they instead feel that the only way to secure our hard earned cash is with a brute force approach.

As a child I remember seeing junk mail pile through the letterbox, only to be thumbed through and discarded. I always found it amazing that companies who spent a small fortune sending out thousands of unsolicited letters could make it worth their while. Presumably enough people must have been signing up for credit cards and cash prize puzzle competitions to cover the cost of the vast amounts of paper that end up in the bin. At least in this sector the evident underlying profitability of the operation provides some reassurance of the senders logic (providing we swerve the environmental hot potato on where all the waste paper goes).

Of course the modern age has heralded modern methods of purveying mass commercial plugging. The birth of 'SPAM' email is considered to be in 1978 when the same email was sent to 300 recipients without being personalised as was the trend at the time. Of course this made those diligently watching their inboxes more than a little upset. How dare the sender on this magical new system not take the time to write something which was addressed to them by name and had some relevance to what they might be interested in? If only they knew what was to come. By 1988 the first chain mail reared its head, "Make money fast" bore all the hallmarks of SPAM to come.

Unsolicited bulk email now makes up 80-85% of all emails sent worldwide. To this end both individuals and corporates spend significant time and money to filter out this bulk of chaff, to leave them with a workable system for communication. There is a worldwide contemptuous attitude towards such mail, with even the less internet-savvy individuals being able to spot most scam or promotional emails a mile off and send it reeling off into the ever-present Junk folder.

So how and why do the senders persist? Re-applying the metric of profit from the Junk postal mail story, it is reasonable to assume at least a few recipients must offer their wallets. What is different with email is the cost per send for the Spammer. With little or no overhead and the ability to be invisible as a sender, even one or two sign-ups from 2 million mail outs proves to be a good day at the office.

The only real solution is for the Internet community to form consensus and crack down on what is heralded as a free, easy and cheap solution for global communication. A strict opt-in service for inbox owners or lock-down of acceptable recipients would go some way to cleaning up our daily e-post bag. I am not sure the problem will ever go away, but with spending on combating SPAM estimated at upwards of £150 per Business user per year, can we really afford not to tackle the root cause?

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