Will
spammers ever learn this is no time for slime?
by Charles Bermant
Special to The Seattle Times
Sunday, March 5, 2000, 12:55 p.m. Pacific
By now, most people have found a way
to deal with the influx of spam. The really industrious
ones install a filter or regularly inform their Internet
service provider about these messages. The
"lazy" ones spend a few minutes every week
deleting this chaff, in the same way they would weed a
garden.
In any case, anytime you see a message
like "recovering 30 messages" you know that up
to two-thirds of that number could be stuff you don't
want to see.
Now, line up: How many out there give
money to panhandlers? "Yes" to the left,
"no" to the right, and "sometimes"
in the middle.
Those in the middle, who will you
consider? Someone who asks politely for food money or
someone else who yells and spits and promises to spend
the cash on booze?
And have you ever seen someone in the
latter group adopt the behavior of the former because he
wasn't getting any results?
You would think that the people who
send spam would follow a similar learning curve. You
would be wrong. Those wily spam meisters just keep
getting slimier. For instance, I received a recent
alert: "You have an audio message. . . ."
Thinking that it may be a communiqué from a friend, like
an electronic greeting card, I followed the link and was
greeted with - why was this a surprise? - a commercial.
Most people will fall for this exactly once.
Accordingly, anyone who decides to go
into the personal voice-greeting business will need to
battle a huge perceptual obstacle.
But the most egregious attention
grabber came from jdensch@unbounded.com loudly
trumpeting that "your payment is past due." Of
course, you will open something like that. It turns out
they are selling a debt-negotiation service, one
designed to consolidate and eliminate your bills.
This seems a little misguided. People
with too many unpaid bills are in trouble because they
ignored messages like this to begin with. What's one
more? Especially one that comes through e-mail.
Now, we know that we should not answer
any message that arrives as spam. But a few of the
bargain hunters among us may rifle through these
messages in search of a worthwhile deal. Nasty tricks
like this will push these straddlers into the
"no" group.
Spammers, beware: If you want to get
the undecided vote, then stop the slimy stuff. Get some
manners. Why do I get the feeling you're not listening?
Charles Bermant's advice on e-mail
appears weekly. If you have questions or suggestions,
you can contact him, by e-mail, at ptech@seatimes.com.
Type "Inbox" in the subject field.
Copyright © 2000 The
Seattle Times Company
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