Throwing A ‘Spam’-Mer In The Works

Originally published in the Corporate Counsel section of the Economic Times (India’s leading business daily) on February 15, 2004

We’ve all got a lot of it, without ever asking for it, and despite the fact that its free, we don’t want any more of it. We’re talking about ‘spam’.

‘Spam’ may be defined as unsolicited bulk e-mail sent for commercial and marketing purposes. Almost anyone who has a web-based email account would have received innumerable amounts of spam mail, which attempt to sell anything from low mortgage rates to pornography to miraculous cures for weight loss.

Spam is undesirable for several reasons: Spam mails are useless - containing information that we would usually never need, and products that we would even less likely purchase. Spam mails are also a headache, as we would require deleting them to ensure that our email accounts do not exceed the maximum permitted