Apparently the world is getting ready to "spit" on us with "Spam over Internet Telephony." Maybe I'm just slow on learning this new technology acronym, but a USA Today article last week brought this one to my attention. It's bad enough that we're getting spam in our email, in our IMs (except on BitWise, I might point out), in our snail mail (how many credit card offers do you get per week?), and on our landlines (yes, please, consolidate the credit card debt that I don't have!), but now we have a new frontier.
Apparently, marketers can [supposedly] send a thousand voice messages per minute to Internet-telephony phones, which are rapidly becoming popular. Imagine coming home and finding one hundred voicemails, and having to wade through them all in case someone left a legitimate message. So you equip your phone with anti-spit software, which marks some messages as spit, but what about the message from Aunt Marge that gets flagged as spit and discarded? How would you like to explain to Aunt Marge why you missed the surprise birthday party for Uncle Victor?
Welcome to the future of more spam, spim, spit and whatever over acronyms we can dream up as more technologies and avenues for spam are developed. Will technology eventually be the world's biggest constantly-running advertisement? As spam, spim and now spit continue to escalate, I simply wonder if with each new technology we invent we are creating more technological terrors that will one day become useless due to abuse. How much longer until email is useless? Will Internet telephony be dead before it starts?
<RANT>Speaking of spit, if I ever meet a spammer, a spimmer or a spitter, I hope someone else will hold him or her down while I [insert acts of public humiliation and shame here]. Closely related lexicographically to spit, it's called spite, and in this case, no, I'm not above it.</RANT> A tad vindictive? ;) Maybe, but I'd really like some satisfaction for all the cumulative time I've spent dealing with spam, an accumulation of time that will inevitably grow faster and faster.
Please join me in a prayer for deliverance from spam, spit and spXX (for those future incarnations of time-wasting unsolicited advertisements). If you're just looking for deliverance from spim, however, try BitWise. I'm not above shameless plugs either. :)
here is a good reason for spamming; http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/14/2131211&tid=111&tid=98&tid=95&tid=1
24million ..not bad
also..msn doesnt have any spam in its IM (i havent gotten any...) ...and i havent gotten many on yahoo either (maybe 3 or 4). ICQ probably had the most..not sure if it still does.
I can get rich robbing banks, too, that doesn't make it legal or right. There are legitimate ways to earn money, and illegitimate ways. Spamming has pretty much been universally viewed as a nuisance and not to be condoned, as would be evident by the new anti-spam laws and the punishments that can be impressed upon spammers. This doesn't necessarily mean it will stop, but it does indicate what society thinks of it.
I frequently receive comments from users that they couldn't stand the junk messages on Yahoo, MSN or ICQ... so I know it happens on all of the other services. Of course, how often and to how many people are entirely different questions.
msn?? no way! never once happened to me. i havent heard of it happening either. hotmail is a different story :P