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Studies

by Mike Masnick

Wed, Sep 11th 2002 2:23am





Friendly Junk Mail Worse Than Spam?

from the I-don't-think-so... dept

A new study says that "friendly" junk mail is still a much bigger problem than spam. They say that people who receive forwarded jokes, chain letters, and video clips from friends take up more network resources than spam. I thought this was surprising since I barely receive any of that sort of stuff - but maybe it's just because most people who know me know that I am vehemently against these sorts of things (and respond angrily when someone does send one). However, it doesn't seem like much of a surprise that a large video clogs up a network more than a text spam. I'm not sure that it's really an issue that needs to be "studied". People just need to learn not to forward crap like that on to their friends.

3 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Sep 11th, 2002 @ 8:28am

    I get 24 spams for every true email I get and spam is not the problem?

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Re: No Subject Given

    identicon
    msykes, Sep 11th, 2002 @ 9:29am

    Okay, I sort of agree about this one. I get a ton of spam to *some* of my email accounts, and it's annoying but I deal with it. However, the only time my email account has ever been hosed (by going over quota) was when my mom emailed me a 10 meg or so video that I really didn't want to see anyways. So in that sense friendly junk mail has certainly done me more harm.

    msykes

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Friendly email is Friendly email

    identicon
    LittleW0lf, Sep 11th, 2002 @ 2:37pm

    I cannot see how friendly email, even bandwidth prohibitive friendly email can be any worse than SPAM. We are averaging around 35% SPAM a day, for 100,000 emails a day... That is unwarranted, unwanted waste of electrons. Friendly emails may be unwanted by some, but they're friends, you know them and even better, know where they live, and they will stop when asked...the Spammers won't.

    I frankly view "friendly email" as a necessary evil. It shows that someone cares enough to send you something, even if that something has little value. And besides, I like many of the jokes my friends send, even though they all send the same ones back and forth, usually because they are friends they know you'll get a kick out of it. And if you don't, they aren't as likely to take your rejection of their email as grounds to send you 15 more.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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