Do you hate spam emails? Why?

I hate spam. I hate spammers. For those of you uninitiated in Internet culture, I have no issues with the canned meat product. No, I’m referring to unsolicited, junk email.

Many people have asked me where the expression “spam” originated. Interestingly, a plausible explanation comes from Hormel, the makers of SPAM lunchmeats. According to Hormel, use of the term “SPAM” was adopted as a result of the Monty Python skit in which a group of Vikings sang a chorus of “SPAM, SPAM, SPAM” in an increasing crescendo, drowning out other conversation. Hence, the analogy applied because UCE [unsolicited email] was drowning out normal discourse on the Internet.

“So what?” you might say, “If people get offers to see nude pictures of Monica Lewinsky or herbal Viagra,’ who’s to worry? After all, that’s what the delete key is for and some people might want herbal Viagra, pictures of Monica, or both.” Perhaps there is something to these arguments, but let me explain why I believe spam is so insidious.

It’s Bad for the Economy

Much like the issues with unsolicited faxes ten years ago, spam shifts the burden of cost to another party--Internet Service Providers (ISPs), web hosting firms and recipients. Much of the spam you receive is sent using stolen bandwidth. Not only do ISPs worry about filtering out incoming spam, they spend quite a bit of time and energy preventing spammers from stealing resources to send email. When spammers spew out their emails, they often cripple mail servers and slow down web access for everyone.

Spam interferes with legitimate commerce and communication. 

With all the clever stealth spam in circulation, legitimate inquiries are sometimes filtered out accidentally either manually or by anti-spam software. Legitimate emails go unanswered. Some folks have stopped posting to newsgroups or don’t include a real email due to the problem of “email mining.” That’s spammers collecting emails from postings in newsgroups. Every day, millions upon millions of unwanted emails must be discarded. All this effort expended to insolate us from spam and to discard spam takes a toll on our nation’s productivity.

Most Spams are Porn or Scams

A survey performed by http://ChooseYourMail.com indicates that 30 percent of all spam is pornographic and nearly 30 percent promotes a get-rich scheme. Phony healthcare products and use-spam-to-get-rich offers abound. Much of the spam going to minors promotes pornography and illegal activities.

What to do About it

Send your spam to the Spam Recycle Center (SRC) at spamrecycle@ChooseYourMail.com. Include the abbreviation for your state in the subject and your spam will be forwarded to the appropriate legislators. The SRC, chooseyourmail.com/spamindex.cfm, documents thousands of offending emails that often begin with, “This is NOT spam,” “I’m so sorry if this message was sent to you in error,” or use tricky subjects such as, “Re: Your Question.” The SRC has now forwarded over one million spam emails to congress in an effort to push ahead legislation.

There is such a thing as legitimate, opt-in email. This type of email uses lists of people who request to be placed on specific mailing lists and can opt-out at any time. Opt-in email can provide amazing results with very few of the drawbacks seen with other types of advertising. But now, opt-in email is suffering since so much of the spam claims to be legitimate email. Ian Oxman of the Spam Recycling Center says that spam reduces the effectiveness of legitimate opt-in email advertising and steals from the powerful potential of all email communication.

So now you know why I say the only good spam is the kind you can eat with creamy mustard, bell peppers and garlic on rye toast. And by the way, don’t worry about the good folks at Hormel--they say their canned meat product sales haven’t suffered one bit.

For more delicious recipes, see the Hormel SPAM web site at http://www.spam.com. To learn more on how to combat the evils of spam, visit The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email at http://www.cauce.org.