Writing for life

Published in the Career Moves section of the Evening Echo on 01/10/2007

In our parents day, encountering SPAM at work meant that you had some dodgy looking pink luncheon meat on your sandwiches. While the SPAM of the day may well have been unpalatable, at least it served a purpose. Today’s endless barrage of electronic spam, by contrast, is of no discernible benefit to the person receiving it whatsoever.

In short it is unwanted, unwelcome, unhelpful, and it’s costing Irish businesses a not-so-small fortune.

What has all this got to do with recruitment, careers and so forth, I hear you ask? Plenty. It affects your efficiency at work, and it costs the company you work for money. How much spam arrived in your company e-mail account inbox this morning? If none did, rest assured you’re in the minority, and guaranteed that you’re not receiving it because your company has invested time, energy and expense to filter it out behind the scenes.

What about the CV you so diligently crafted and sent out to all those recruitment agencies? Did it actually arrive or is it sitting in an overzealous spam filter, unopened and unread?

As more of our communication at home and at work takes place through electronic media, spam is becoming more and more of a problem – and impacting more of us than ever before.

Some things you’ve always/never wanted to know about Spam:

• Spamming, according to that online font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, is: “the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages.”

• While the most widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam, the term applies equally to unsolicited messages via other media, such as instant messaging spam, newsgroup spam, search engine spam, spam in blogs, mobile phone messaging spam, internet forum spam and junk fax transmissions.

• It is widely believed that the name “Spam” is derived from the Monty python sketch set in a cafe where practically every item on the menu contains the luncheon meat “SPAM”

• In 2001, the European Union’s Internal Market Commission estimated that “junk e-mail” – or spam – cost Internet users €10 billion per year worldwide.

• The California legislature found that spam cost United States organizations alone more than $10 billion in 2004, including lost productivity and the additional equipment, software, and manpower needed to combat the problem.

• On 31^st May 2007, one of the world’s most prolific spammers, 27-year-old Robert Alan Soloway, was arrested by federal authorities in the USA and charged with 35 offences, including mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering.

• In January 2007, a Sheriff Court in Scotland awarded Mr. Gordon Dick £1368.66 against Transcom Internet Services Ltd., who allegedly breached anti-spam laws.

• SPAM the luncheon meat celebrates its 70^th birthday this year.

Electronic spam is a big problem, and despite increasingly aggressive attempts to control and legislate against it, it only seems to be getting worse. As we continue to immerse ourselves in an increasingly digital world, it looks like spam is something we all have to learn to live with.