Yes. Would that not be god sent? Well, yesterday I logged on to my E- mail account after a couple of days and was mortified with the number of mails I had. I began expecting the worst - something major wrong at the office and they probably couldn't reach me because I was on vacation. What if I had been fired? An inquiry? Robbery! Oh no, it had to be fire…all sorts of calamities ran through my head as I waited impatiently for my inbox to open. Imagine, to my utter disbelief, when not a single one of them was official. In fact, I had only 1 personal mail from a list of about 30 or more. My relief slowly turned into anger as I saw the amount of unsolicited mail I was getting. My junk mail spam filter is activated, but still these guys manage to find a way to get into my inbox.
This set me thinking- why doesn't someone do something about this problem? Don't other people find it as irritating? After speaking to a couple of friends and doing a little bit of research and practical thinking, I realized that there are a number of reasons why these guys are still running scot-free:
- No time: All of us are busy people. We work hard and when we come home, the last thing we want to do is get out again. It does not matter how irritating these mails are. People don't really have time to waste over something as trivial as this.
- Lack of inclination: Ok. So you get spam. Well, face it. So does everybody. Learn to deal with spam. All you have to do is delete spam, right? How long does that take? So why make a big hue and cry about it
- No resources: There are those who really want to do something. But once they realize the costs involved in filing a case, not to mention the time that it would consume, they hesitate and their resolve becomes weaker. After all, no one has extra money to burn right?
- No interest: Another big reason is that others are not interested in solving the matter, so why should one person break his head over it? No one will turn up to support anyone who takes this cause up and the poor guy will end up looking like a loser. No one is interested in being Mr. Poor guy. .
But you know, most of the reasons mentioned above are just excuses and nothing more because a lot is being done about this issue. It is not a simple one. The whole point is someone is invading your privacy, surely if someone entered your house you will take some action right? Besides, there are a lot of people who are against spam and are making their presence felt. All you need to do is join them.
In 1996, Craig Cockburn, who is one of the foremost authorities on the internet, right from the time it was conceptualized, came up with the whole idea of spam filtering. This spam filter works rather stealthily, but these guys deserve nothing better. It markets itself to people who send out spam and they send the list of the addresses that they have to send, to the spam filter, obviously unaware of its true function. Now the spam filter removes all the addresses of those people who are registered with it and sends the new list, sans the users of the spam filter, back to the marketer. This way, there is no problem involved.
Now the first concern in such a scenario is that what if this spam filter thing is a scam too? Well, there is only one way to find out. Create a false Id and sign up for the spam filter. Check for a while to see if you get any spam.
The best thing about this is that this is a movement against spam and their main goal is to eradicate spam or filter spam. This service is completely free and there is nothing that you stand to lose from it. Actually speaking, this works out well for everyone concerned - those who hate spam stop receiving it, the spam filtering movement will be a huge success and can show that even the impossible can be achieved with a little co operation.
So next time when I log on to my account, I'm going to smile because I don't expect to see any spam in there. Trust me, it's a nice feeling.
