> I've been on the Internet since 1986. My opinion re: the negative
responses
> to ActiveAgent is that these people with their Internet noses in the air
> are pathetic and anal-retentive. Sorry to have made you click once to
> delete something you didn't want.
I've also been using the Internet for quite some time and appreciate that
many people are quite reactive, and sometimes overly sensitive to
inconsequential issues. However, I don't believe that the "Spam" agent
dilemma is such a case.
If it were just one or two worthless junk e-mails, I'd grin and bear it.
However, imagine the absolute nightmare of your Inbox being filled to
overflowing once a few thousand small businesses decide to unleash their new
e-mail auto-spam on the Net.
If such agents are allowed to randomly disregard robots.txt protocols,
gather multiple (and potentially numerously repetitive) mailto's from HTML
documents, and otherwise use mass-mailing techniques to flood us with
unsolicited junk mail, then it will no longer be a minor issue of, "Dammit,
why did Company A send me this!" *click* ...delete...
Instead, the situation will be, "$#!@ I've got 1,345 new e-mails, and I
can't tell which ones I do and don't want to read!!" If this happens, on a
daily basis, I'm not going to be a happy camper. In fact, even if I do
invoke killfiles, filters, or other sorting methods, I'm going to be
outright furious at the idiots who are wasting time, money, and bandwidth
sending me mail I don't want. Accordingly, if I see one such e-mail today,
my response is going to be an electronic foot up the hind-quarters of
whoever was irresponsible enough to send it.
As with most issues, e-mail spam seems trivial when it begins, but it can
easily escalate to ridiculous and wasteful proportions. Witness, as I'm sure
you are aware, the tremendous flood of get-rich-quick posts that have taken
over the Usenet/News battlefield. Even with moderators, such postings are
hard to filter out. Even worse, I have no moderator for my e-mail save for
myself.
> Tell me: if it's something that's worthless to you, why do you spend any
> more energy than a click to be rid of it?
I don't spend more time on it...if I can tell that something is worthless
from just glancing at a Subject line. However, that becomes increasingly
difficult as marketers and list members begin using subterfuge and outright
lies to make you parse through their electronic dross.
Make me *click* once and I sigh in frustration, but force me to read
through hundreds of messages, *clicking* repeatedly and I become downright
angry. Believe you me, as the sound bite goes, "Don't make me angry...you
wouldn't like me when I'm angry."
In short, I want my electronic mailbox protected as much as possible from
unsolicited mass-marketing. Just as I hate finding junk mail in my real life
mail, I also hate seeing it in electronic form. In conclusion, as many
others have firmly stated, I WILL NOT BUY FROM, SUPPORT, OR IN ANY WAY
FURTHER ANY COMMERCIAL CONCERN EMPLOYING SPAM E-MAIL!!
Respectfully,
Bryan Cromartie