The fact that so much money, resources, and time is spent on spam advertising can only prove one thing- it works. Someone, in fact, many someones must click on inbox junk mail for this advertising solution to continue.
But why does spam work as a form of advertising?
- Email addresses are easy to get a hold of for advertisers to send their spam to
- Spam is cheap to send
- One email can be sent to thousands of people simultaneously
- There's more of a chance of a recipient of spam responding to an email than paper junk mail delivered to their letterbox.
All in all this means more business with less costs- for the advertisers anyway. Since the majority of the global email is spam it is the ISPs who have to process the data that inevitably have to pay the bill (and have to charge their clients for it inevitably). The cost burden also needs to be footed by the ISP themselves due to their need to upgrade servers to deal with information that no one wants anyway. It is not only a waste of time but a huge waste of money.
But what stance has the law taken against spam?
It was not long ago that the only control that state government had over spam was if it was selling fraudulent products. In 2003 however the CAN-SPAM Act was introduced which attempted to cut down on spam especially non-solicited pornography and marketing in particular. In 2003 however, according to the New York Times, spam accounted a little over 60% of all global email. The very next year after the Act was brought into being it jumped well over 80%. Legislation is clearly no solution to the problem of spam.
To conclude there really is no end in sight for this multi-billion dollar business which specializes in annoying the global internet community. Spam folders seem to be doing the trick but to what point if one has to incessantly check if important emails have been accidentally sent to the wrong folder?
Possible Solutions:
More absurd than the fact that billions of dollars are spent a year on advertising for viagra, fake designer goods, and e-books that teach you how to seduce the man or woman of one's dreams, is the fact that so many people are buying these products.
It really is a matter of overcoming one's curiosity and not replying or even clicking on spam email. If there is no possible chance of selling goods through spam advertising it will quickly dissolve on its own accord.
