The other day, an apparently well-known gentleman in his home country of Zimbabwe contacted me via e-mail and asked if he could deposit million into my bank account.
At first, my problems seemed to melt away. I could envision myself retiring at age 30 and driving around town in my new, super-sized Hummer. My wife and kids in the vehicle, we could drive down to Disney World with our newly found fortune and pay for a personal meeting with Donald Duck.
Of course, I awoke to my keyboard and my small existence. I remembered the source from where my dreams and fortune came: e-mail.
Our quest for conveniently communicating with one another has apparently been taken advantage of, and for some time now. It really has gotten out of control.
Every peddler out there apparently now has a laptop, and my e-mail address is always at the top of his or her list. I'm sure yours is also included.
The other day, I returned to work from a nice weekend away from the office only to find I had received 211 e-mails. After carefully hitting the delete button a number of times, I counted 21 that were legitimate. The others ranged from companies who wanted to sell me prescription drugs at rock-bottom prices to several that contained obvious viruses. I won't even acknowledge the ones of obscene content.
The cleverest of these spammers are those who want to sell you anti-virus protection or spam filters. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Alas, I, however, did succumb to the ways of the dark side at one point in my younger career. I was, dare I say, a spammer.
I won't mention the name of the non-profit conservation organization for which I worked. I had been placed in charge of the organization's newly formed e-mail newsletter, which also included growing the organization's membership through online signups.
A piece of spam caught my attention one day that led me to do the evil deed. It was a company out of Washington that promised we could hit millions of people with similar tastes with just one e-mail. It was guaranteed to get a huge return.
So, we set it up. It was to send all night and we would have our responses in the morning. I worried all night.
The next morning, I awoke to find that 300,000 e-mails had been sent with our message included. I also had a voice mail from our Internet provider asking about the tremendous spike they had the night before from our e-mail boxes.
Needless to say, it wasn't a pleasant experience. For months after, I responded to a number of people who didn't appreciate our unsolicited mail out.
And for all the effort, we had 11 people become members.
Not soon after that, I realized my calling wasn't in marketing and public relations. I went back to being a newspaperman and hating the spammer I once was. Could we say I was at the lowest point in my career?
There are, quite possibly, billions of e-mails out there. I now admit I have contributed to the monotony of all those e-mails. My name is Jared, and I am a recovering spammer.
But my plight to rid the world of spam begins. I have turned over a new leaf and started a crusade to end the world of Viagra ads and winning lottery notices clogging up our inboxes. My plan is simple. All we have to do isĄ
Hold on, I have another e-mail coming in. |
