In Your Face

Spam

I, like everyone else with an email account, receive a daily dose of Spam (unsolicited bulk emails). Companies and individuals offer me a myriad of services and products, including:

 Penis enlargement

 Porn

 Cheap loans

 Opportunities to assist ex members of the Nigerian armed forces transfer millions of dollars to Switzerland, using my bank account

All of these “opportunities” are routed swiftly to the trash can.

I believe, as I have stated in the “Vision Thing” section of my website, that the internet is one of the greatest inventions in mankind’s history. It enables people to share ideas, interact with different cultures and to communicate; at the touch of a button. It will lead to an exponential growth in human intellectual, social and cultural development.

Governments, as much as they may wish to, have been unable to control the free movement of ideas and experiences between people and organisations. However, this freedom of communication has several downsides; Spam being one of them.

Speaking from personal experience, I have noticed that the level of Spam is increasing. This clogs up my mailbox, and wastes my time as I have to dispose of it. This increase is due to the fact that Spam has become big business. Unscrupulous individuals and organisations “harvest” the net for email addresses, and sell them on to others who program computers to deluge the hapless recipients with Spam.

Some people fear that this will lead to the eventual “log jamming” of the world wide web, and that people will simply be put off using it.

However, I believe that long before this situation is reached the main ISP’s (internet service providers) will recognise the threat that this poses to their business; and form a regulatory body that will formulate, and enforce, a code of conduct for the net.

I urge them to take action now, before governments try to stick their “snouts in the trough”; and regulate the net to death.