When I first began my sojourn into the Net, I would log into my e-mail account and expect to see a letter from a friend. Life, however, is not so simple. I was met with an avalanche of advertisements for credit cards, home loans and penis enlargements. Oddly enough, I don’t seem to receive many offers for breast augmentation. Either the companies who send this junk think I’m an idiot, old enough to own a home, or a man.
Spam is a business that is not going to leave our techno society soon, if at all. As long as people buy into junk mail scams and ads, the industry will continue. Web sites like www.paulgraham.com have links to some of the most effective filters, but nothing is 100 percent accurate. So, like the Pollyanna I am, I’ve learned to live with my spam.
Despite its annoying properties, I’ve come to see spam as the bratty kid sis I never had. How can I sustain anger over something as trivial as herbal Viagra and urgent love letters from unknown e-mail addresses? Spam, however, is not all hugs and puppies.
Scams like this have been taking in pigeons since the 1970s. It has several variations, usually involving several hundreds of dollars needed to be smuggled out of Africa. According to Creative Loafing Atlanta, a weekly newspaper, the Nigerian scam’s biggest victims were the Ghasemis, an Iranian-American couple who lost $400,000 over a three-month period in 2000. The couple came up with the cash by liquidating their savings, mortgaging their house and borrowing from friends. If there is a lesson to be learned here, it is that these e-mails are not something to trust or take seriously.
It’s my personal choice to delete all bogus mail, but when I feel like indulging in the wild world of spam, I go to spamradio.com, whose crowning glory is some of the more ridiculous e-mails set to music.
In a way, spam is a uniting force for our society. Everyone hates it. No offense to telemarketers, but the only thing I dislike more than receiving junk e-mail is an unsolicited call. At least spammers aren’t calling homes at dinnertime.