The Messaging Times

Recently, I was thinking about the similarities between spam and terrorism. Waging a war on either is futile. But currently, the desire to get rid of both involve measures which affect all of us on a daily basis.

Anyone who has traveled by air lately understands how these measures affect everyone, not just terrorist suspects. The same is true for email marketers. Rules put in place by antispam entities make it difficult for non-spammers to get their messages to the inbox of their customers.

Ironically, no matter how many measures are put in place — and no matter how inconvenient or costly those measures are to those of us who aren’t spammers or terrorists, they do little to stop terrorism or spam.

I mean, really – are terrorists going to change their ideology or desire to carry out their horrific plots because of new TSA measures that make us drop our collective pants at airport screening areas? Are spammers going to stop sending email because the rest of us are finding it difficult to get our message to our customers? And are those measures worth the inconvenience to all of us because they reduced spam volumes by 10 percent? 20 percent? 50 percent? I still get my daily dose of Viagra spam. Are those measures worth our collective inconvenience because it gives us a perception that we are safer from terrorism?

In the last 300 days, there have been over 14 million deaths related to Cardiovascular disease, over 1 million deaths related to traffic accidents, over 250 thousand deaths related to fires and over 5 thousand deaths caused by leprosy. Compare those figures with the amount of deaths caused by terrorism over the past 10 years, 2,929 (remember to divide that number by 10!) and it makes you wonder if our time and money is being spent disproportionately on the least of our problems. But for some reason the fear that we have about terrorism makes us accept the measures in place which affect all of us on a daily basis. Why aren’t we as fearful of traffic accidents, cardiovascular disease or fires? Those things that kill so many more of us each year? Why wouldn’t we let car manufacturers put a regulator in cars that limits the speed of our vehicles? Why won’t we collectively pay for good preventative health care for all Americans?

And why are we so fearful of spam that we allow measures to exist which affect all of us each day? Those measures that cause an important sales query not to reach our inbox; those measures that cause our important announcement to end up in the junk folder of our most important client; those measures that allow someone who signed up to receive our email one day to report it as spam the next because it was easier than unsubscribing.

What cost do those of us who aren’t spammers or terrorists have to pay before terrorism or spam is thwarted? Are we willing to pay that much? Are we willing to stop flying or stop emailing? And then what? Will spammers who were making a gob of money not exploit something else? Will terrorists who are driven by a zealous belief not develop plots that don’t involve airports?

Regardless of how many new measures antispam organizations or anti-terror agencies create, spammers will continue to send spam and terrorists will continue to plot terror. And we will continue to pay.

I wonder if money and time would be better spent focusing on finding and prosecuting those who are actually doing the spam and the terrorism and leave the rest of us alone.