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COPYRIGHT 2003 Information Today, Inc.
The Internet's killer application is not Web browsers. It is e-mail. Communication capabilities have become so interwoven into most of our work--and home--lives that it is sometimes difficult to remember how we managed to function without it. And younger generations never knew.
This essential foundation of the Internet is under attack. Sending e-mail is so easy. Millions of e-mail addresses are readily available. Combine these two concepts, and e-mail becomes an obvious direct marketing campaign. Unsolicited e-mail messages--hawking everything from mortgages to online casinos to unknown stocks to Nigerian banking scams--have proliferated. These messages fall under the heading of Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE), often known, unaffectionately, as spam. And UCE is growing at an increasingly annoying pace.
More than just an annoyance, the flood of UCE is also changing e-mail behavior. Aggressive filtering will occasionally cause the loss of real messages. Attempts to avoid spam make people try new ways of communicating their e-mail addresses. So even if you are among the lucky few who have so far avoided the avalanche of unwanted e-mail, it is important for the information professional to be aware, at least, of the impact and changed behaviors that have resulted.
IMPACT OF UCE
E-mail usage continues to grow. According to a recent Computerworld article (Gretel Johnston, "We've All Got Mail," Computerworld Online. Sept. 27, 2002 [www.computerworld.com/printthis/2002/0,4814,74682,00.html]), the total number of e-mail messages is expected to jump to 60 billion a day by 2006 from the current 31 billion a day. And the majority of the jump will be in spam, notifications, and alerts. Mike France, in "Needed Now: Laws to Can Spam" (Business Week [3802]:100, Oct. 7, 2002) [www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/sep2002/sb20020926_5958.htm], notes, "Spam now accounts for 38 percent of all e-mail traffic, up from 8 percent last year," according to filtering company Brightmail.
How does it happen that one out of every three messages--or more--is an unrequested stock pitch, banking scam, or ink jet cartridge ad? E-mail address harvesters are to blame, at least in part. These unpleasant little bots crawl the Web looking for e-mail addresses. Ever post a message on an online forum or include your e-mail address...
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