Why do I get Spam?
Each and every day, without fail, I receive between 100-200 pieces of spam in my email. I'm not alone. Most active marketers receive enough spam to choke a full-grown horse. It's comes with the territory of working online.
And I admit, I don't help matters when I have numerous re-directs and POP3 aliases, though most of these have never been registered as a send address anywhere. That is, I have never used these addresses to sign up to any site, nor placed them anywhere but on my own site as a filtering contact address for a particular reason: for bad links, to submit a question, etc.
Yet these addresses receive spam constantly. Why?
Who is stealing these addresses and how are they selling them? I know they are being harvested; I know they are being sold... does no one ever wonder about these things when they buy "leads"? Even when those leads are supposed to be "opt-in" or "double-opt-in" leads.
All of this would be very understandable, even forgiveable (hey! We're all marketing, right?), except for one thing: at least half of the emails I send out are never received. I am not talking about auto-responder generated commercial emails. I'm talking about emails going to people I know and work with personally-- emails to my friends, family and colleaques. They are never received. And their emails to me are never received, either.
In the latest edition of the WebPro News, the leading article is about Search Engine Regulation
(http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/2007/08/09/scholars-push-for-search-engine-regulation). It discusses all the reasons why the major search engines need regulating: mostly because their searches are biased, slanted toward their own view of what is fair and right, something the article goes on to prove.
But what I want to know is, never mind the search engines: let's start regulating the email servers. No matter what else you may say about the USPS, no matter how slow or expensive, when someone sends you a letter, by US Federal regulation, NO ONE is allowed to look at it but you. NO ONE is allowed to decide whether or not to deliver it; even the USPS is only allowed to deliver it. Period. Doing anything more is called Tampering with the mail, which is a Federal offense.
I cannot count the amount of times I have discovered (usually via IM) that an important email did not reach its destination-- either one I should have received or one I sent out.
The email servers claim to be "protecting" us from Spam-- yet, as I said, each and every day I receive up to 200 pieces of spam! WHY??? Legitimate emails are filtered out, but spam is allowed through. WHY?
And, having worked with safelists, I know that many of the email servers simply filter all emails from a safelist out-- WHY??????? Do they KNOW what a safelist IS???? It is a list in which each member HAS ALREADY AGREED TO RECEIVE THOSE EMAILS-- FORMALLY AGREED!!! But the email server says, "no, I don't think so."
What is their reason? By what right do they do this?
Well, if you ask most email servers -- especially those who provide the service for free -- they will say, "our email is not intended for commercial use. Safelists are a commercial, business endeavor, using much more bandwidth than we intended for our free members. Therefore, because we offer our service for free to private non-commercial customers, we reserve the right to block out any emails we deem commercial."
That sounds like a pretty solid argument. Except they block email from the professional accounts even more rigorously than the free ones. How do they explain that?
And let's talk about auto-responder accounts for a moment.
I have an auto-responder account with a list of almost 40,000 members. These are people that have gone through a double-opt-in process... they had to have either signed up for my newsletter themselves and then had that confirmed; or I sent them an invitation which they responded to-- and then they confirmed again. Even more than that, I know many of these people. We have had email and IM exchanges-- many are in business with me. Yet they do not receive my newsletter because their email server filters it out-- BECAUSE it is from an auto-responder!!!
I don't know.... things are beginning to look somewhat suspicious.
Think about it: most of the email servers that offer free accounts are part of large (usually very large) corporations. And they block out legitimate commercial emails. Yet, not by a long stretch do they block out all of them-- many, many are delivered-- particularly the ones that actually do qualify as SPAM (the laws of which, you may be interested to know, actually only pertain to sexually explicit content NOT -- as is the commonly-held belief -- all commercial email-- and the corporations SHOULD know that if they are at all professional, that is-- truth is, they most probably do). Only the ones that are legitimate and, worst of all, the ones that, either by participation in a safe list or an opt-in list (both of which require the recipient's confirmation), the receiver actually WANTS!!!
WHY??
It couldn't be that these large corporations are trying to squelch small independent businesses, could it? It must be just an incredible co-incidence that by "protecting" their free members and limiting excessive band-width, they are also keeping many from successfully making an independent living online.
How better than to interrupt communications? Who wants the individual to be able to earn a living online-- if they did, then who would work for the corporations? Oh, but they have no motive... riiiight.
And before anyone claims, "spam is a scourge," remember: I am talking about emails that people have actively and knowingly REQUESTED.
Also, before you think me a complete fool, yes, I do know how the email filters work: with trigger words. But if you saw examples of those trigger words, you would shake your head as I have. Because the trigger words included are such "highly" suspicious phrases as "today," "offer," "opportunity," and on and on. In other words, many of these trigger words are very common phrases that could pertain to anything. Except... words like, "business," and "join" are NOT triggers.... huh?
Whatever the motives, the fact is, that all of this is proving that email is not the great "boon" so many predicted several years ago. And it is not the spammers who are ruining it; rather those who profess to be protecting us. What I want to know is who determines what protection we need-- and who says those protecting us have our best interests in mind?
By the way... in an attempt to TRY to get as much of my email as possible, I turn off all spam filters on my end... so when my friend's email about her cat is filtered out, I really have to wonder if email can be trusted.
