Business Bytes
Jan 19, 2011

A Decrease in Spam! Oh Wait, Nevermind

 

In late December and into early January, email spam significantly declined.  This relief from spam came from a decline in activity by the Rustock botnet, a high producer of spam located in Russia.  But Rustock started back up and running this past week, which means spam has now increased.  This fluctuation of spam is almost like reading a weather report.

Did I notice the decrease and subsequent increase of spam in my email inbox?  Honestly, no.  The main way I avoid spam is with Gmail's Priority Inbox.  The Priority Inbox sorts through emails and only allows the ones that are actually important enough to read.  Along with its spam filter, Gmail knows what I am interested in reading first based on which emails I open and which emails I reply to.  Also, I can mark which emails aren't important if they end up in the Priority Inbox and I can add important emails to my Priority Inbox. The inbox gets even smarter with time, keeping track of what I do.  I find that it really works.  In my regular inbox, I have around 11,000 emails.  In my Priority Inbox, I only have 183—that's about 1% of my total email that's actually considered important and relevant.

It's annoying that Rustock is responsible for so much spam email, but it's even more annoying that they are increasing their spam efforts to include pop ups and fake virus attacks.  How fun.  In all seriousness, spam really is a time killer.  The most annoying thing about spam for me is knowing that it's wasting the time of the people in my company.  Since they have to deal with spam sucking their time, it in turn takes time away from our customers.

Because I find spam so annoying, it makes me like Daniel Balsam even more. Balsam, a former marketer turned lawyer, sues spammers for breaking California's anti-spam law.  In fact, I like him so much, I think I'll send him a whole basket of SPAM Nacho Burgers. Or maybe he's more of a SPAMKIN Breakfast Muffin kind of person?

Curt Finch, CEO of Journyx, created the world's first web-based timesheet application and the foundation for the current Journyx product offerings in 1997.


Curt Finch has more than two decades of software development and distributed workforce management experience. In 1997, Curt created the world's first internet-based timesheet application and the foundation for the current Journyx product offering. Curt has a B.S. in Computer Science from Virginia Tech. His book, All Your Money, is available on Amazon. @curtfinch