Spam is no vegetable!
By Shah N. Khan
Posted Wednesday, December 8, 2004
Spammers are like spiders coming from the World Wide Web and crawling in and on your mind, head, your body and spine. Many dictionaries do not give you the meaning of Spam. One dictionery defines it a a vegetable. The spell check in many word processing software would not give you its spelling!
Our unabashed dictionary defines Spam as pinching the bottom of a girl in a crowded street.
On a crowded elevator of a sky-scrapper of a computer giant, a shapely lass was pinched at her bottom. She turned back and growled, " Who is spamming me?" The handsome young man behind her looked at her in face and said, "Pardon me. I thought it was a safe address". "Never mind, I will opt in for your mail!" The girl replied smilingly as she was impressed with his looks and mannerism.
As you know spam (noun) means an unsolicited e-mail message sent to many recipients at one time, or a news article posted simultaneously to many newsgroups or lists.
Spam is a sort of junk mail. Generally the contents of a Spam message or article are not relevant to the topic of the group or the interests of the recipient.
Spam is an abuse of the Internet in order to distribute a commercial or religious or political message or publicity material to a huge number of people at minimal cost.
Spambot means a program or device that automatically posts large amounts of repetitive or inappropriate material to newsgroups on the Internet.
Internet users are experiencing an increase in spamming! As thousands of new web sites are created every year and more businesses flocking to the Internet, spamming either due to ignorance of Internet culture and rules or a willful disregard for them, has grown.
Quite a few big companies also utilize Spam techniques. Many people abhor such intrusion on their time and privacy but many people like to get mail. The popularity of email lists is growing. Many new list servers have come.
How can you deal with Spam?
Simply hit reply button and write stop in Subject. Most people will honor your advice except the mischief-makers Unless you find that the Spam is due to ignorance of internet rules, do not waste time in writing to advise that you find spamming to be invasive and annoying, and urge them to stop the practice immediately However, many spammers hide their real email address andmany such replies bounce.
In such cases, you can write to the postmaster of the spammer's Internet
service provider, complaining that they are disturbing your privacy. This is not always effective, as unscrupulous spammers have found ways to make their messages appear to originate from another provider entirely. But if your message does get through, the Internet service provider may cancel the spammer's account.
Laws are rapidly changing. The business organizations and individuals can get into trouble if they display total disregard to the rules regarding email broadcast. In Europe and US the laws and rules are enforced strictly and many people lose their ISP for spamming.
About the Author
Shah N. Khan has over 20 years experience in marketing and supervising life insurance sales force besides underwriting and advertising. He is now editing a weekly ezine Fraternity Briefs Online (http://www.yahoogroups/group/fraternity2) He also works as Internet Marketing Consultants and helps his two sons in their web designing business. (http://www.shah.khan.as)
