Stupid Spam: Enough Already!

Every once in a while, to break the monotony, I write about something that has no direct link to the ProAV market.

For example, a few months back, I addressed the irritation I have with e-mail inconsistency in our market. I expressed how frustrating it is to receive e-mails all day long where I have to spend wasted minutes (and sometimes hours) trying to figure out how to open attachments, translating poorly written e-mails and trying to send attachments to ANYONE with an AOL e-mail address.

Well, here I go again.

Recently, a friend of mine in the industry, Catherine Bell of Crestron, mentioned how many e-mails she gets from people that are junk mail chain letters. You know the kind. They are those one's where supposedly you forward them on to tons of people who then, in turn, forward them on and you eventually become a millionaire. Sound familiar? In fact, recently, I even got one that was supposedly a test that Bill Gates himself (yep, believe it or not, Bill Gates contacted me - well, through an e-mail that was forwarded through hundreds of other forwarded e-mails) and told me that he and Netscape, of all companies - his arch competition now owned by AOL, were conducting a e-mail campaign to see how many people this could be forwarded to. Well, if I did my part, I might win up to $10,000. Come on.

Haven't gotten one? Well, consider yourself blessed and anointed one of the chosen few, because the rest of us get tons of them.

What is the deal with this fascination? Does anyone REALLY believe any of this is true? I suspect that some people must believe it as they are still coming. I still get them. And, they seem to come in waves. Some days I'll go without a single one. But others, I'll get two or three of them.

Where do these things start? And, why?

Well, I have a hunch.

What about the people who call you at night to tell you that you've won a 2-nights stay at some resort somewhere simply by taking a short 3-hour tour of a new time share resort? Nah, it can't be them.

OK, maybe it's the same people who stuff envelope upon envelope with junk mail to keep the US Postal Service so profitable. Don't believe me? Well, no matter how much junk mail you get - whether you toss it or read it - the US Postal Service gets paid for it. Stamps cost pennies, but millions of stamps cost millions. So, why wouldn't this make sense? Someone's got to profit from all that junk. (I guess it could be my local trash service though).

Then again, it could just be stupid people. People who just don't know better and don't realize what they are doing is falling for the latest in high-tech cons by allowing companies that sell e-mail addresses to build up databases of e-mail addresses for even more junk mail. OK, maybe I'm being hard on these people, but next time you get one, read it carefully. Does it stand to reason that Bill Gates has so much free time that he decided to test the technical sophistication of the Internet and its ability to send e-mail all over the world by sending a message full of nothing specific? Come on.

However, if you're not willing to consider the possibility that these could be junk mail, can you at least take me off your forwarding lists?