Bill Gates: Why I Hate Spam

Opinion Journal ^ | 06/23/03 | BILL GATES

[Pokey78]

SEATTLE--Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren't so irritating.

But spam is worse than irritating. It is a drain on business productivity, an increasingly costly waste of time and resources that clogs corporate networks and distracts workers. Among consumers, it spreads scams, pornography and even computer viruses. Worse, spammers prey on less sophisticated e-mail users, including children, threatening their safety and privacy. And as everyone struggles to sift spam from their inboxes, valid messages are sometimes overlooked or deleted, which makes e-mail less useful and reliable as a channel for communication and legitimate e-commerce. In short, spam threatens to undo much of the good that e-mail has achieved.

[Fiddlstix]

Bump

[John Beresford Tipton]

Spammers should be sentenced to-
The Blue Screen of Death!

[Fred Mertz]

Why I hate Microsoft: Let me count the ways...

[RichInOC]

Shh, Bill, don't cause a fuss. I'll have your spam. I love it. I'm having spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam and spam.

[Reeses]

Bill Gates must like pop-ups though because you can't turn them off in IE like you can in Mozilla.

[Radix]

I do not believe Bill Gates on this for a moment.

Spam is an evil thing that is intrinsically linked to Windows and E-mail.

It is ok though. It is all about Capitalism.

[dfwgator]

I'm surprised it took 5 responses till we got the first Monty Python reference.

[I_Love_My_Husband]

I use Firebird....it's faboooo!

Anyways my dear husband says that he's probably getting spam in his Hotmail account! LOL!!

[RichInOC]

That headline was close enough to the script that it was just begging for it.

[Ahban]

This is good. I am going to e-mail it to everyone on my CD-ROM of addresses.

[Drango]

Uh Bill? Aren't you about five years too late?

[KateUTWS]

It looks like the oldest Gates child must have opened an email before dad got to look at it!
Whew, some of that stuff is awful.

[Marie Antoinette]

Why *I* Hate Spam: It smells like cat food.

[PianoMan]

I use the Internet 2+ hours a day on average, and get about 1 spam email a week tops, with no filters on my account. I sure as heck wish I knew what my secret was, because I'd sell it for big money.

[D-fendr]

Well...

Next time you get spam, click on that little note that says: "click here to be removed from this list," or have your company list your email address on its website, or…

[PianoMan]

Didn't mean to imply I *want* Spam. I have other methods of obtaining penis enlargement tablets ;).

[D-fendr]

No, I know you didn't; I was just describing a couple of easy ways folks become spam magnets.

[ChemistCat]

ARRGH. I found this through another news site and I had to register to read it. Yep, register. IE give my email to spammers.

I should have known that sooner or later a clever FReeper would find a source that didn't require registration.

Well, I hope they don't mind that I gave the the email that I never check.

[The Red Zone]

Our proposal is to create a regulatory "safe harbor" status for senders who comply with e-mail guidelines confirmed by an FTC-approved self-regulatory body. Senders who do not comply would have to insert an "ADV:" label--standing for advertisement--in the subject line of all unsolicited commercial e-mail. This would enable computer users either to accept ADV-labeled mail or to have it deleted automatically.

OK, my computer just downloaded 10,000 ADV's, but not to worry, after the 5 hours it took (on a DSL line) it has deleted them all.