Is Spam Targeting Children?

from the probably-not dept

One of the common rallying cries against spam is that it's "targeting" children who are too unsophisticated to know how to deal with it. An opinion piece from the National Post is suggesting that this is ridiculous. Spammers aren't "targeting children". The problem is they're not targeting at all. If they were, they would actually care about people who opt-out, since those people are clearly bad targets. The writer is worried about spam legislation that is a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of spammers targeting children. While I have my doubts about the effectiveness of anti-spam legislation, I think the writer in this case is missing the point. Does it really matter if children are specifically being targeted if they're still receiving a ton of spam? If the problem is that children are receiving things like pornographic spam, that doesn't change whether they're being targeted or not.

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