ISSUE 487: The high tech office- Feb
23 1999
ALAN ZISMAN
Most spam may be bland or even tasteless,
but junk e-mail can also serve a purpose
How many e-mail message do you get in a typical
day?
I get about 50, making me, by some estimates, a
moderate-user. Most are one or another sort of mass-mailings.
That doesn't make them junk mail, necessarily. Some of
those are news releases, from companies seemingly desperate for a
mention in this column. All of those get at least a brief scan, and
some get filed away for future follow-up. (A hint -- make your subject
line count. Calling your message "Press Release" is unlikely to grab my
attention. But don't call it "Free Sex" when it isn't. That won't get
your message taken seriously.)
Many of my mass-mailed messages are from mailing lists
to which I have subscribed -- a way that I try to keep on top of the
ever-changing technology world to better serve you, dear reader. And
while sometimes repetitive, these mailing lists are one of the most
powerful tools of the Internet and one of which many of your businesses
should be making use.
If your business has a Web page, if you have a product
line, a customer base, a catalogue, if you ever have sales, then you
should consider setting up an e-mail mailing list. This gives you a way
to keep in touch with your customers regularly at far less cost then
using traditional mail. The key to doing this successfully is to
include information that your readers can use -- and make it voluntary.
Always provide information about how a reader can subscribe to the
mailing list and, most importantly, how they can have their address
removed from the list. Let visitors to your Web page know about the
mailing list and don't send more than a single message to anyone who
hasn't actively signed up. (Assuming you want to mass-mail more than a
couple of dozen ad-
dresses, talk to your Internet Service Provider about the actual
mechanics of setting up and maintaining a
mailing list.)
About five to 10 per cent of the messages I receive
each day can kindly be referred to as "unsolicited mass mailings." Junk
e-mail. Spam, in Internet vernacular.
Surprisingly, spam seems to create more passion among
many Net users than plain old junk mail or junk fax, perhaps because
e-mail is a newer medium and most people don't yet take it for granted.
Personally, I'm more offended by junk faxes, which force me to waste my
(personal or business) money and resources printing out a copy of an
unwanted message. Junk e-mail is relatively easy to delete from my
Inbox, and dealing with it takes only a few seconds a day.
I haven't been deleting my spam-mail. Instead, since
October, I've been saving it in a special folder, to see what I could
learn from it. Not surprisingly, some of the messages are offering
sexually oriented services, but more are about making money. Investment
opportunities. Clean up credit histories. How to become a spammer -- I
mean a direct e-mailer. In other words, offering to sell a CD-ROM with
literally millions of guaranteed accurate e-mail addresses, so that I,
too, can send unsolicited sales messages worldwide.
Some people suggest not replying to spam, that doing
so merely verifies that your e-mail address is live and increases the
amount of junk mail you receive. Recent U.S. legislation aimed at
controlling junk e-mail seems, instead, to have "legalized" it. A few
messages include a paragraph quoting the act, as if that makes them
legitimate. Since that legislation, many message include a "you can
remove yourself from this mailing list by..." note, but most of the
Remove responses I've sent have bounced back with a failed delivery
message.
Personally, more than anything else I'm more amused by
this wave of junk e-mail. It certainly hasn't motivated me to buy
anything. Would you invest in a stock based on a tip received from hkdeiruyjhgsald@
et.net? On the other hand, wiggles
@mci.com with a message titled "Watch me Wiggle" may have more
credibility. Spammer promote4u@
canadianmail.com suggests that "companies will spend over $2
Billion on Direct E-mail in 2001" but if so, I can't believe it will
generate anything near that in income.
I tried a number of e-mail utilities promising to
control spam and, frankly, couldn't find any to recommend. You can
avoid listing your address in massive e-mail address lists like 411.com.
And if you use Usenet message groups, set up your software to embed
junk characters in your e-mail return address -- mine becomes azisman#
@#home.com, along with an automatic signature line suggesting that
readers remove the #'s if they wish to contact you. That way, the
automated "bots" cruising the Net to harvest e-mail addresses just add
a non-existent address to their
collection. *
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