You've Got Mail, But it's Mostly Junk

by the Editors of the San Jose Mercury News

Today, when using your computer, you are more likely than ever to be flooded by email from people you don't know who are trying to sell you something you didn't ask for.

Such unasked for email from unknown people trying to sell you unwanted items, known as "spam," has been annoying Internet users for years. The recent increase, however, in the volume of spam has individuals, companies, and even state and federal governments, feeling angry and demanding solutions.

"Spam used to average maybe 10 a day," Shauna Wright, 34, of San Francisco, complained to an Internet discussion group recently. "Now I'm getting upwards of 90 to 100 a day." Bright Mail, a San Francisco company that sets up thousands of "bait" email accounts to catch spam before it reaches Bright Mail's clients is catching an average of 25,000 different spam messages a day, compared to 15,000 a day in the previous three month period--the largest increase it has ever recorded. Two years ago, the company found only about 5,000 messages a day.

What's worse, the overall level of junk email, spam, is expected to increase. The average Internet user received 1,466 spam messages this year, according to Jupiter Media Metrix, a research firm, and that number is expected to grow to over 3,800 a year in the next five years.

Spam costs the sender little--it costs about as much to send 10 of these unwanted messages as it does to send 10 million of them. But for those who receive spam, it is not free. Deleting spam takes time, and important mail is sometimes lost in trying to separate it from spam. People who feel constantly assaulted by junk email are also less likely to trust any commercial communication by email. "The real downside is that it makes people afraid to participate in electronic life," says Brad Templeton, chairman of the electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties organization. "They don't want to post to a mailing list or go in a chat room for fear they'll be inundated with junk mail and won't have any privacy."

Even businesses and government agencies are forced to spend millions to manage spam. It has become so damaging and hated that rivals such as AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo are promising to work together against it. Worldwide corporations whose employees use email regularly are now spending increased money and time on spam filters to handle their large daily volumes of email traffic. The European Union released a study that estimated the worldwide cost of junk email at $8 billion annually.

One thing legislators propose is to ban all bulk, unsolicited, commercial electronic advertisements. It's the most effective approach, and the one favored by many anti-spam activitists. It's also the one still waiting for a brave lawmaker to craft into a bill. Legislators have shied away from banning spam because of understandable concerns about restricting free speech. But spam is not just spech. It is a costly intrusion into someone's property. No one has a right to throw a rock through your window just because it has a note attached to it. Spam is that rock. And spam itself is drowning out much of the legitimate speech on the Internet.