Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam

Spam is such a wonderful thing. Pitches for penis patches, mail order Viagra, HGH, Paris Hilton porn videos, Brittany Spears nude photos, anti-spam programs and everything else under the sun. Reports now indicate that as much as 75% of all email may now be some form of unsolicited spam.

And it's not going unnoticed. The media is starting to take a look at the real costs associated with spam, including a loss of productivity in businesses.

I'm generally not a big fan of government regulation, but the spammers have gotten so out of control that they are threatening the real usefulness of the Internet. Some way, some how they have got to be stopped or slowed, otherwise they will kill the internet through spamicide.

In one 24-hour stretch, Postini's online spam tracker blocked 74,177,271 pieces of spam for its clients.

Over 74 million spams stopped in a 24 hour period by one company. Think about how many spamblocking companies there are. Think about how many people, like me, don't use a spamblocking service (I use other ways to divert about 75% of my spam to a box I never see). Think of how many hundreds of millions or even billions of emails per day that is. Now imagine how much time is spent dealing with spam, even if it only takes 3 seconds per email (on average) to erase each one. And then the time spent in resending emails that were accidentally deleted as spam. The costs to our economy are enormous.

The Internet is a wonderful tool that allows businesses to contact a large number of potential customers with very little cost. For mass marketers, this was an incredible opportunity - and many have exploited it well and responsibly.

But the spammers have no conscience and no concept of ensuring the long term health and usefulness of the Internet. And unfortunately, without external restraint being applied, they will destroy it for everyone.