"Email Crush!"
By A. T. Rendon
Posted Monday, November 22, 2004
Analysts predict that the volume of email on the Internet, most of it junk, will grow another 50 percent in 2002.
That is a lot of email!
With estimates that the number of Internet users is nearing the 1 billion mark, the amount of email floating around the Internet is only going to increase and problems will get worse.
Anyone online can tell you that a huge part of the problem is SPAM, or the Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE).
The subject has been beaten like a dead horse and no viable solution is in sight. No, not even federal legislation can stop or fix this problem adequately.
The person or person(s) that do find the solution will go down as genuine heroes in Internet history.
Ironically, there is another side to this entire problem that has yet to be addressed. The irony is that it comes to us from established, legal sources, not the spammers.
We have all received their email.
The From: field says, "Mail Delivery System". The Subject: field says, "Mail Delivery Failed". And the Body: of the email begins with, "This message was created automatically by mail delivery software (Exim)."
This is especially true if you have a mailing list.
I send out email to my list of over 7100, 100% OPT-IN subscribers twice each week and it causes me to be bombarded with hundreds of emails daily!
It starts with an email message that states, "WARNING", your message could not be delivered but you need do nothing.
Then they follow up that message with the "Mail Delivery Failed", the vast majority of those emails simply tell me that the intended recipient has a "Full Mail Box".
Finally, I receive another email letting me know that they have still been unable to deliver my email and that it is being deleted from their list.
For each email I send out that does not make it to where it is intended, I get back at least three emails.
My experience has been that at least 5% to 10% of every mailing I send out will come back to me as "Not Delivered".
That means that each time I send out my list of over 7100 subscribers, I get back at least 2100 "Message Not Delivered" emails.
Sending out my list twice weekly means I generate over 4200 email replies that I did not request and I do not need nor want!
As far as I am concerned, if my subscriber does not receive my email because their mail box is full, it is their loss - not mine.
My advertisers do not lose out either as I take these undeliverable emails into account when posting my subscriber numbers, officially listed as 6384 this week.
Imagine how much less email would be floating around if they would simply NOT tell me it was not delivered.
Perhaps the biggest such offender is Exim, (http://www.exim.org/)
"Exim is a message transfer agent (MTA) developed at the University of Cambridge for use on Unix systems connected to the Internet.
It is freely available under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Its facilities are extensive and in particular it has some defenses against mail bombs and unsolicited junk mail in the form of options for refusing messages from particular hosts, networks, or senders."
It is unfortunate that we as email recipients can not refuse email from them!
This organization is otherwise providing an invaluable service online and at no charge to those that use their software.
Yet the feature of reply to senders when recipients do not receive the email is clogging and choking off the free flow of the Internet email system.
And this is not the only problem generated by and from the established, legal sources of email delivery.
Viruses!
The Love Virus that circled the globe in 2000 caused over a billion dollars in damage to businesses and individuals.
Daily, I receive scores of infected emails that I simply delete.
So why is this problem allowed to continue?
Why are viruses not deleted by those computers set up to forward email around the world and that form key parts of what we know as the Internet?
All of this excessive email flow and virus email is causing us "Email Crush!"
It is time to express our opinions to people that can help us do something about these two major problems.
For FREE information on how and to whom you can voice your opinion, send a blank email to our auto-responder at: mailto:voice@emailexchange.org
We can make a difference!
About the Author
A.T.Rendon is an entrepreneur and published writer. Subscribe to FREE Business Classifieds Newsletter & receive FREE online access to our Password Protected "FREE Submit To Over 2.7 MILLION FREE Ad Sites!" mailto:subscribe_fbcn9@emailexchange.org Visit us at: (http://emailexchange.org/?Articles)
