eBuzz - The Spam Wars: Winning or Losing?

The Spam Wars: Winning or Losing?

The New York Times just ran an article expressing alarm at the "war against spam" that is currently being "lost"; and we've noticed that several email lists have been echoing author Markoff's panic-edged concerns.

And one has to wonder, perhaps cynically, if some of the spam concern does not relate to commercial opportunity: it is, after all, in the business interests of a lot of IT people to sell solutions to e-mail-related problems - the more serious and/or the more widely-publicized the problem, the easier it is to sell products and services. Few people bothered with anti-spam products when spam was just a known pain in the neck rather than the subject of newspaper articles plugging the idea that it's costing business billions of dollars and will "destroy the Internet" by overwhelming all legitimate commercial activity.

Spam is a problem, obviously. As e-marketers, we're possibly the industry that is the most affected, and deliverability is an issue for everyone. But surely the answer is not to promote a panic about "closing down the Internet" - it is, rather, to work at always using best practices in our businesses to differentiate ourselves clearly from the producers of spam. The sky isn't falling yet, and we do our customers and ourselves a disservice by buying into any dire predictions that it is.

And that's our take on the news today!

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