University Wire
06-18-2001
(Daily Mississippian) (U-WIRE) OXFORD, Miss. -- Picture this: in the middle of your busy day, you grab a spare moment to check and see if anyone was actually thinking about you long enough to send you an e-mail -- a nice "how are you doing," perhaps -- when you discover that your inbox looks like it has fallen casualty to some sort of e-pocalypse.
You have 37 new messages and you think, "Hey, wow, I'm popular!" That is, until you scroll down and see that a certain free e-mail service, which shall remain nameless so I don't get sued, decided to sell your e-mail address to every business humanly imaginable, from Aulophobics Anonymous (for those who suffer from that horrible fear of flutes) to the Zebra Trainers of America club.
Although there have been many laws proposed to control spam, which I believe stands for "Stupid Pathetic Abusers of Mail," no effective measures have been put into use to protect the average Internet user from his or her daily dose of junk mail. But you can just delete the worthless stuff in a few seconds without having to open it, so it's no big deal, right?
Wrong.
As many of you might have noticed, these businesses have become quite clever in their advertising tactics over the past few years. Back when Internet spam first started, you'd know when a business was sending you worthless junk because they'd use a real e-mail address and a descriptive subject line, such as "FerretsRUs@FerretsRUs.com -- How would you like to raise ferrets for fun and profit?" Now, however, the same company will send the same exact e-mail, but with a fake address and name, and a phony subject line (i.e., "Tim -- Hey, I just got a cool new pet! His name is Sparky!")
Another annoying thing is when your "friends" ask you for your e-mail address, making you think they actually like you, when, in truth, they just want to add you to their "victim list" and e-mail you only whenever they get some sort of chain letter from someone who, in turn, only pretends to like them. But remember, they aren't trying to annoy you by doing this. They're just trying to make sure they'll have "10 years of good luck" and that their homes won't be "destroyed by a herd of elephants with PMS who haven't been fed for a month," by passing on a letter that, in their minds, has the mystical ability to predict and control all future events. Sort of like Miss Cleo.
While we're on the subject of idiot friends, how many of you are as sick as I am of getting mail forwarded to you on the behalf some sort of fake charity? You know, chain letters that contain sob stories like this one:
"... the Wish Upon a Star foundation will give 8 cents to Little Jimmy Smith for every person this e-mail is forwarded to. Please send this e-mail to everyone you know so Jimmy, whose father is dying from a rare cancer caused by canned soup, can do his patriotic duty and sue the hell out of the Campbell's company. If you don't, it will just show how heartless you really are." Cue depressing violin music.
I know this might be a difficult concept for some of you to grasp, but little Jimmy doesn't exist. This, and every other e-mail like it, was created by some geek with a little too much time on his hands.
Just for fun, make up a completely bogus story that couldn't possibly be true and see how many of your friends are mindless enough to forward it when you send it to them. Chances are that in six months, it'll come back to bite you in the inbox.
(C) 2001 Daily Mississippian via U-WIRE
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