April 17, 2003

Spam, Spam and More Spam

spam   Always On includes a post by Phil Goldman, founder and CEO of Mailblocks and former co-founder of WebTV, commenting that spam is killing consumer e-mail and that the Web portals -- which dominate consumer e-mail -- are doing nothing about it. The State of Consumer Email: Consumers Deserve Better :: AO

Well, I think that Mailblocks is doing nothing, too. Filtering and blocking e-mail is a quixotic exercise, because spammers proliferate domains and e-mail addresses and because doing so only increases the chances that good e-mail will be filtered out. Mailblocks requires human confirmation, from the sender, if a "from" address is not in the recipient's address book, which of course just makes getting mail from new people -- like prospective clients, long-lost childhood friends, etc. -- problematic.

Goldman does say:

It’s perfectly clear to me that the industry needs to turn the way we deal with consumer email and spam on its head. Otherwise we risk killing the killer Internet app.

Now I can agree with that entirely. See Suing Spammers.

 Posted by glenn

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