Federal regulators are continuing to put email spammers in jail (old link, but there are new court cases such as MySpace) and fining them million of dollars. So lets first start by saying, that we don’t do spam, we are very white hat here at Banner Blindness. Email spammers engage in email spam because its profitable and also one of the most effective forms of modern-day marketing - everyone checks their email. However, I find it rather absurd that traditional Direct Mail or Junk Mailers are able to do the exact same thing and face no legal consequences. The only reason why Junk Mailers are able to engage in mailbox spamming is because they pay for it. Direct mail marketers pay postal fees and keep hundreds of thousands of postal employees employed. A friend of mine recently mentioned that without Direct Mail marketers you wouldn’t be able to mail a piece of mail for .34 cents or however much it costs; instead costs would be $2.00+. The most upsetting part to me about Direct Mail marketers is that they pollute the Earth and cut down millions of trees every year. Additionally, they rob you of your time because you have to sort through all your junk mail to find important bills. Email spam is not going away and has increased every year since 2003 when the Can-Spam compliance act was issued. Traditional Mail Marketing has also increased every year for the past 20 years or so - and thus the increase in postal rates, discounting inflation.

There really is no solution to email spam. There are numerous types of email spam, and the gray area is very wide. Legitimate companies violate the Can-Spam act and don’t even know it. Small players still blast off tens of millions of emails a year that solicit colon pills, ringtones, porn, weight loss patches, time share, etc… Then there are multi million dollar corporations that are part of large publicly traded companies that sell large scale email deliverability solutions. Websites such as MySpace, Facebook, eBay, Amazon, and other large websites need these email consulting and deliverability solutions because they have massive databases of emails. Sending out 30,000,000 emails is no easy task and thus requires companies with the expertise and technological capabilities of delivering. There is a solution to traditional mail marketing, and that is a Mail-Box Spam Can Compliant law; already in the works but facing serious government and corporate hurdles. In fact, the Direct Marketing Association just recently created a website to inform consumers about the “benefits” of junk mail. Intelligent people will quickly dismiss this as they know that Junk Mail robs them of their time and thus money or personal time.

US federal regulators need to realize that spam is not going to go away and putting non-violent white collar criminals in jail is wrong. If spam is a criminal act then people putting Junk Mail in the front of my house should go to jail as well. Education and effort, like most problems in life, are the ultimate answers. Gmail is by far one of the best ways to view mail and avoid reading spam. Right now my Gmail account has over 25,000 emails in the inbox, and 60,000 emails in the spam filter. I no longer archive or delete emails, which might end up being a storage nightmare for Gmail, but it allows me to simply scan my email box, like Google Reader, and open only the emails I want. I’m no longer susceptible to email spam unless I get email tricked.