December 2nd, 2004
Spam: Yes, you're partly to blame
The feedback is already rolling in response to my colleague Dan Farber’s posting regarding a recent panel’s conclusions that e-mail users are partly to blame for how out-of-control the spam problem is. While I agree with the overall findings that end users are the most empowered to stem the tide of spam, I disagree with the notion that the approach is for end users to accept more of the burden through better execution of best practices. There is no question that we should all follow some best practices in order to suppress the effects of spam (and there are many effects). But, ultimately, the bulk of the problem is addressable by an improvement to e-mail standards and, so far, the vendor community has failed to deliver those standards — despite having been officially notified of the need almost two years ago at an event that I organized called JamSpam. Though the technical obstacles are challenging, they are not insurmountable. As I have written so many times before, the true obstacle is greed.
In other industries (for example, the automobile industry), when manufacturers fail to act in the best interests of their customers, those manufacturers usually face severe economic consequences. Auto makers are particularly sensitive to the impact that a product known to cause death can have on their bottom line. After seven people died as a result of Tylenol being laced with cyanide, how long was it before tamper-proof seals turned up on almost everything we ingest? Granted, the cost was passed along to us, and there hasn’t yet been a death associated with spam. But the point is that these companies knew that if corrective action was not taken immediately, an economic penalty — beyond the damage already done — would soon follow.
You may think that e-mail vendors see it differently — that they have us over a barrel and that they’re not fearful of economic retribution due to continued complacency. That’s not so. When I organized JamSpam, I made it clear that, on the basis of attendance, or lack thereof, I would publicly label invitees as either part of the solution, or part of the problem. The final list of attendees read like the who’s who of the e-mail business. Even companies that weren’t in the e-mail business were there. They are fearful. But it’s up to you to drop the other foot.
So far, we, as a community of end users, have given e-mail technology providers a free ride. It doesn’t matter how much spam overloads our inboxes on a daily basis. Although standard, interoperable solutions that would go a long way towards spam abatement can be baked into all e-mail solutions, e-mail technology providers have failed to deliver such functionality and end users continue to economically let those providers off the hook. Until end users (everyone from the Fortune 500 companies to consumers) decide to withhold their economic support (and not just for these vendors’ e-mail solutions — but for all of their wares) spam will only get worse. So, yes, after at least two years of knowing we’ve had the leverage to bring about a spam correction, the fact that spam continues to thrive is our own damn fault. But definitely not because of our lack of technical vigilance.
