# What's so horribly evil about "spam" email? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 6, 2003, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-horribly-evil-about-spam-email/193255 "2003-08-06T02:30:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![rmbnxs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b9e5f3/32.png) [@rmbnxs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rmbnxs)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2003, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-horribly-evil-about-spam-email/193255/121 "2003-08-10T02:55:57Z")
Yeah, what’s so terrible about spam? ---
**Author:** ![rmbnxs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b9e5f3/32.png) [@rmbnxs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rmbnxs)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2003, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-horribly-evil-about-spam-email/193255/122 "2003-08-10T03:00:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by rmbnxs \* > \*\*Yeah, what’s so terrible about spam? \*\* Yeah, what’s so terrible about spam? ---
**Author:** ![rmbnxs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b9e5f3/32.png) [@rmbnxs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rmbnxs)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2003, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-horribly-evil-about-spam-email/193255/123 "2003-08-10T03:07:10Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by rmbnxs \* > \*\*Yeah, what’s so terrible about spam? \*\* Yeah, what’s so terrible about spam? ---
**Author:** ![rmbnxs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b9e5f3/32.png) [@rmbnxs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rmbnxs)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2003, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-horribly-evil-about-spam-email/193255/124 "2003-08-10T03:13:16Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by rmbnxs \* > \*\*Yeah, what’s so terrible about spam? \*\* Yeah, what’s so terrible about spam? ---
**Author:** ![rmbnxs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b9e5f3/32.png) [@rmbnxs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rmbnxs)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2003, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-horribly-evil-about-spam-email/193255/125 "2003-08-10T03:24:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by rmbnxs \* > \*\*Yeah, what’s so terrible about spam? \*\* Yeah, what’s so terrible about spam? ---
**Author:** ![CanvasShoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@CanvasShoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanvasShoes)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2003, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-horribly-evil-about-spam-email/193255/126 "2003-08-10T05:16:16Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by D\_Odds \* > \*\*Sigh, one more. > > **BULL-FUCKING-SHIT** > > I’m work for a firm that does consulting. To communicate with my clients, to exchange the files that I work on, to communicate with out mutual vendors, we all use email. I could not serve my clients without email. > > My firm has a huge, secure research site accessible by the internet. Not the intranet - the internet (actually both, as it is quicker in the office over the intranet). You see, we consult, so we are not always in the office (sometimes we even get the joy of telecommuting). I need that research to work. Thanks to VPNs and other networking options I’m unaware of, I’m able to go into a clients office, plug into the internet from their network with my laptop, and pull down the information I need from my firm and email it to them from my firm’s email to their firm’s email. > > That’s ignorance talking **Rex**. Help fight the war, not continue it. \*\* AMEN AMEN!!! As a project manager for an Alaskan firm with several clients and coworkers in the “outside” I use email a LOT to send and receive files and keep in touch, especially with our east coast offices that close at about the time we’re all getting back from lunch. Sheesh **Rex** , YOUR office sounds like the “dream office” I’d wager most of us actually use our work email for work. ---
**Author:** ![DarrenS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/977dab/32.png) [@DarrenS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DarrenS)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2003, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-horribly-evil-about-spam-email/193255/127 "2003-08-10T08:17:24Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by tlw \* > \*\*Junk snail mail doesn’t masquerade as anything other than it is. You can easily sort out ads and credit card solicitations from business correspondence and greetings from friends without ever having to open an envelope. \*\* Alas, even that is not true. I regularly get innocuous-looking business mail at home with things on the envelope like “Important information about your mortage” (I fell for it the first few times), or “Your home insurance policy.” Junk mailers use some of the same deceptive techniques spammers use. For a discussion of some of **RexDart’s** attempts to defend the indefensible, check out [CAUCE’s](http://www.cauce.org/about/faq.shtml) website. They roundly shoot down the tired old defenses like “just hit delete” and “e-mail is free for consumers”. I place spammers on the food chain somewhere alongside pond scum, virus writers and genital parasites. ---
**Author:** ![capacitor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e47774/32.png) [@capacitor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capacitor)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2003, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-horribly-evil-about-spam-email/193255/128 "2003-08-11T06:24:02Z")
Oh rex, you own a cell phone that you pay for text messaging? Read this [article](http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-06-16-spam_x.htm), and then try to convince me and the others that spam is not costly. I don’t own a cell phone, but I do know that this is spam with a phreaking twist. ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2003, 8:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-horribly-evil-about-spam-email/193255/129 "2003-08-11T08:02:46Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by DarrenS \* > **Alas, even that is not true. I regularly get innocuous-looking business mail at home with things on the envelope like “Important information about your mortage” (I fell for it the first few times), or “Your home insurance policy.” Junk mailers use some of the same deceptive techniques spammers use.** I got a piece of junk mail recently that looked almost exactly like a bill from my domain registrar - except it was from a different company that wanted to charge me three times as much to “renew” my domain name. (And the real registrar doesn’t send me bills.) “Your domain registration is due to expire in the next few months. Send your payment immediately to avoid downtime and costly reinstatement fees!” etc. ---
**Author:** ![fholloway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@fholloway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fholloway)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2003, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-horribly-evil-about-spam-email/193255/130 "2003-08-17T02:34:43Z")
I’m going to offer a (very qualified) defense of RexDart here and say that unsolicited advertising, in any form, is not inherently bad. For example, I receive tons of junk mail, but I really don’t view it as anything more than a minor annoyance, mostly because it only takes me seconds to sort the legitimate mail out of the junk mail. Furthermore, as someone who has worked in direct mail, I know that it (a) pumps a lot of money into the financial system (I don’t have any numbers in front of me, but I would bet that bulk postal rates provide a majority of the USPS’s revenue) and (b) is presumably profitable for the companies that engage in it. I have no problem with an economic model that can contribute to the general economy without undue burden on consumers. Telemarketing is, I’ll grant, more annoying, and it’s a shame more people don’t realize they can opt out of receiving calls. Personally, every time I receive a TM call, I don’t berate or belittle the caller. Instead, I immediately tell the person to take me off their list. Not only are they legally required to do so, they also must immediately stop trying to sell me whatever it is they were selling. I’ve been doing that for the past five years, and, in conjunction with signing up for the DMA’s do-not-call list, have dramatically reduced the number of TM calls I receive. I also signed up for the national DNC list as soon as it became available. I believe that such a system is not only beneficial to consumers, but also to companies, which can eliminate their least profitable customers from their lists. However, I part company with RexDart when it comes to spam, because I believe it is far more of a nuisance than unsolicited advertising. For one thing, a majority of spam is deceptive. The product being sold doesn’t do what’s advertised, the return address is fake, and/or the company contacting you is far more interested in harvesting a live address than in actually selling you a product (This is because the secondary market of list rental has become far more lucrative than the primary market of selling legitimate goods). Even worse, spammers have taken advantage of opt-out procedures, which are the saving grace of direct mail and telemarketing, to use them for their own nefarious ends. If I tell AT&T to put me on their DNC list, I can reasonably expect they’ll stop calling me. But if I get a spam with an opt-out link, I know that responding to it will not only not solve my problem, it will likely make it worse. This reduces the effectiveness of legitimate opt-out procedures, since consumers will be wary of giving their address to anyone who sends them unsolicited e-mail. If I only received e-mails from companies I had previously done business with, and could easily opt out of further communication with them, I would regard spam as the minor annoyance RexDart views it as. But when I get scads of pornographic e-mails from barely legitimate companies that acquired my address via “alphabet spams”, and when, as a marketer, I have to abandon e-mail marketing campaigns because I worry customers will lump any e-mails I send them in with the “penis-enlargement” spam they get on a daily basis, I have to regard spam as something much more pernicious. Frank ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Cheatem\_Undhow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/13edae/32.png) [@Dewey\_Cheatem\_Undhow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Cheatem_Undhow)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2003, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-horribly-evil-about-spam-email/193255/131 "2003-08-17T13:34:17Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by RexDart \* > **What pipe-dream office do you work in? Employees use email to read and forward glurge to their friends and family. Employees use the internet to screw around on company time. That’s what internet access is used for in the working world. I’ve only worked in an office for one summer, but from what I learned there and what I hear from people who have worked in office environments these days, any business would probably double its productivity by removing internet access from all computers and place a few terminals scattered about the office with access for legitimate research. The office where I worked didn’t have internet access on any computers except those in IT (duh) and in the executives’ offices.** I’m gong to second **D\_Odds** call of “bullshit” on this one. As a corporate lawyer, I frequently use the Internet for research. Both the Lexis/Nexis and Westlaw databases use web interfaces nowadays, and I find them much easier to deal with than their old proprietary client programs. And since both of those services cost money, I can save my clients unnecessary expenses by using other internet resources – for example, if I need to look up a particular company’s SEC filings in the EDGAR database, I can get them directly from the SEC’s web page for free. And your suggestion to “place a few terminals scattered about the office with access for legitimate research” is just plain nuts, since research consumes a pretty big part of the lawyer’s working day – you’d have a queue of associates stretching all around the floor. As for email, while yes, I did get the occasional silly email game forwarded my way (“Elf bowling” was a favorite around Christmastime), I used it for work purposes 95% of the time. Clients increasingly expect to see drafts in near real time. That means either faxing or emailing, and no one is terribly pleased to get 100+ page faxes. Email is also ideal for requesting needed information from a client or notifying several people of a conference call – much better than playing phone tag or leaving a voicemail for each call participant. Dare I suggest that your “one summer” of working in an office environment in some unstated capacity is an insufficiently small sample size to evaluate the use of the Internet in the business world? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-horribly-evil-about-spam-email/193255.md?page=6)