Hold the Monty Python jokes. Spam is in the news again,
and this time it's serious.
So serious, in fact, that it has spurred the government into
action, of sorts. The Parliamentary IT Committee is due to hold
hearings on the problem of junk e-mail, and the Department of Trade
& Industry will be concluding its consultation in the coming
weeks. Hardly the stuff that will have spammers shaking in their
boots, but it is a good start.
Perhaps more promising is the news that Microsoft is diverting
legal teams away from its favourite pursuit of hunting down
software pirates and getting its lawyers to take spammers directly
to court. Speaking for UK businesses, we hope Microsoft
succeeds.
Spam could be seen as a bit of a laugh. It is very easy to be
amused by the promises of cheaper mortgages, improved virility and
free pornography that innundate our inboxes - all good schoolboy
smut. Except that we are not schoolboys and this is not the
playground.
As the internet is maturing, so must the businesses that use it.
Researchers estimate that spam is costing industry about £12bn a
year and could account for half of all internet traffic.
Maybe you work in a corporate IT department that doesn't get much
spam. But if that is the case, you can bet that your internet
service provider does, and it will be passing on the costs of
clearing it up to its customers. This is an industry-wide problem
that indiscriminately hits both users and suppliers of IT hardware,
software and services.
And salacious adverts for porn are just part of the problem.
Databases of customer e-mail addresses are tempting for marketeers
- even the ones in your company. How often do you e-mail customers?
What do you mail them with? It is all too easy to take the
scatter-gun approach. But this can conflict with expecting partners
and customers to trust the internet as a way of interacting with
your business. These customers may soon reach the end of their
tether - and your brand could take a dent as a result.
Remember, there is an IT department in your customer's building
busily clearing all this e-mail off the servers. You don't want
your business to be dubbed a spammer and tarred with the same brush
as the porn and Viagra merchants.
Action by the government and Microsoft may deter some, but not all,
spammers. But one thing that can help is if all businesses put in a
little more thought before they hit the "send" button.
