Green Eggs & Spam
11/23/2002
If Internet service providers were truly concerned with stopping SPAM emails, they should stop selling their customer’s information. Instead they pretend they are doing their best to stop the countless emails that we all receive every day but they are really the ones causing the problem.
Hotmail is one of the most popular free email services on the web. I’ll give you one guess as to how they keep the service free. Every single time I check my Hotmail account there are several unsolicited emails selling various products and services that I have never expressed any intention of buying. Conveniently, Hotmail offers a premium service for a fee that will help to reduce the number of unsolicited emails you receive. Either way Hotmail is getting their money from you. Either you pay to stop the SPAM in which case they stop selling your email address or they make their money selling your personal information. I cannot say that I blame Hotmail for their practices, what do you expect for free?
AOL is notorious for unsolicited emails. This is a large reason that I no longer use their services. I have never received as much SPAM as when I used AOL. The main difference between Hotmail and AOL however is that you have to pay to use AOL. Why does AOL still sell your contact information when they are getting your money from using their service? They cannot possibly claim that the monthly charge does not cover their operational expenses, and even if it did I would venture to guess that the average person would pay an extra dollar or two a month to stop receiving all of this junk email.
Locally, Optimum Online is a high-speed Internet service provider. When I signed up for their service I was required to create an email address through them. Since I have never used this address or even told anyone that it exists, I find it amusing that I still receive SPAM at that address. This proves to me that my information is being sold. Ironically I received an email from Optimum Online vowing that they will be initiating a new program to help stop unsolicited emails.
I can honestly say that I have never actually read an unsolicited email and actually considered buying the product or service they were trying to sell. Are there really that many gullible people that buy these products and services that makes it worthwhile for them to generate these mass mailings? Even on the very remote possibility that I was interested in a product or service offered through an email, I would not trust the source enough to actually buy it through them.
So to any potential person that wants to send me an email about their wonderful product or innovative service; I am not interested! Save your time and effort and skip my email address!
Why? Just Because!