SPAM IS A FOUR LETTER WORD
SPAM IS A FOUR LETTER WORD
There are many bad words in the English language. Many of those words are "dirty" words - words that you should never say around children or in polite conversation. Other bad words are called "swear words" that are mean and nasty.
For some reason, many of these bad words have only four letters - words such as "hell", "damn" and many other words that I cannot write here.
Thus, we call these words, "four letter words." To almost all Americans, a "four letter word" is a bad word.
Today I will teach you a new four letter word: Spam. This is something I dislike very much.
Spam is not a dirty word, yet it is a word that is making people very angry. Spam is a word to describe all those junk emails you get in your computer everyday. Junk emails (or emails you get that you don't want) arrive daily for everything from "get rich quick" schemes, to online sales for medicine, to advertisements for pornographic websites.
No matter how bad it is now, it is expected to get much worse.
According to a recent article, the average American will get more than 2,200 spam, and 3,600 by the year 2007.
Personally, I wish I only got that many. Sometimes I have over 200 every day.
Also, according to the article, it is getting easier to send spam messages. You can buy a CD-ROM with millions of e-mail addresses for about $100 (12,000 yen) and emailing it all those millions of email addresses is very cheap.
Only a small number of people will answer those emails. Apparently less than .01 percent will normally respond, but that is enough for these "spammers" to make much money.
Also, most spam will contain a return address that you can use to remove yourself from future mailings. The experts tell you never to respond. Usually it is a type of trap the spammers use to determine whether or not you are reading their spam.
There is software that you can buy to "filter" out spam. The software is not perfect - sometimes it might filter out your "good" emails, but generally it is helpful.
Spam often contains a computer virus that can destroy your computer. It also wastes a lot of your time and energy, and reduces productivity for office workers. In fact, the average American worker may lose 10.5 days of productive work each year because of spam.
This year, in September, 5,200,000 junk emails were sent in America.
What can be done to fight spam?
On a personal level, don't respond to spam and you should use a spam filter software.
Computer professionals must design their computer networks to resist spam, and government officials must write laws that make spam either illegal, or at least reduce unwanted emails.
But for now, spam is an ugly, four letter word.
Thank you for reading the California Business News. I hope you enjoyed
