Intruders will be shot

How much spam did you receive in your inbox today? Even with the filters running, I get so much garbage that it annoys me every time my blackberry buzzes. In an article a couple of years back, cnet reported that 90% of all email is spam.  In August 2010, there was an average of over two hundred billion spam (200,000,000,000) emails sent a day!

Now me and you – we’re pretty bright. There is no way that we’d fall for any cheap email hoax or dare buy any product from any unknown spammer. But I’m not talking about illegitimate businesses.

I don’t have numbers for this, but what percentage of spammers are illegitimate businesses trying to rip off consumers. If it was less than 90% I’d be shocked. But for argument sake, let’s say it’s 95% illegitimate and the other 5% are legitimate businesses that are “spam marketing”. That’s 10,000,000,000 emails sent by individuals or companies that purchased lists of names and then pressed the send button.

Why do we all hate spam? It’s unwanted, it wastes our time and is designed to be interruptive and intrusive. We resent it. When I talk about spam, I don’t only mean non-targeted email blasts. I mean any email that I did not explicitly welcome. If I received an email from a well meaning Jewish company that got my name off a list that they bought, it would tick me off. Why? Why do they feel they earned a right to bother me in middle of my day just because I was on a list of Jewish males between 18 and 40.

If you’ve earned my trust and I gave you my email address, then I’ve opened my door to you. I’ve given you permission to talk to me about what you can do for me. If you bought my email address, then you’ve broken into my home. You may get in, but there’ll be a shotgun in your face before you can say “spam”.