The Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics

Book Review Chapter 21:

Email Spam: KEITH W. MILLER and JAMES H. MOOR

Library Reference: N/A

Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Information-Computer-Ethics/dp/0471799599/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232853902&sr=8-1

Quote:  “The struggle against unwanted emails will continue”

    This is more like a hard statement for me at least. That means we will definitely keep on receiving unwanted emails (spam) until the future. This sucks because 80% email traffic is spam!

Learning Expectation:

    From the title of the chapter, obviously the chapter will be explaining to us Email Spam or Email and Spam. It is often these days that we get Email messages from our friends, our co-workers, loved ones, etc. Asides from that, we often get Spam messages too, which is really annoying for me and I’m almost sure everyone gets annoyed too. So basically, I want to learn more about spam messages rather than the common definition I know of. There might be something interesting in this chapter that I can pick up.

Review:

    As we read through the chapter, it is interesting to know that the conceptual muddles about defining spam have immediate philosophical and legislative consequences. The muddles though have made it difficult to write effective legislation regarding spam, and the laws that exist have not been really successful at reducing these spam emails. Moreover, it is interesting to note that 80% of email traffic is spam! That’s a lot! Imagine that, only 20% traffic is real emails. This spamming must be stopped. I think that it would really make the email highway less traffic by maybe 50%.

This chapter also tells us interestingly a brief history of spam. As mentioned in Wikipedia in 2007, the first ever spam is telegram sent in 1904. Although the term Spam wasn’t used until the 1980s, when some people in the Multi-User Dungeons would use one tactic or the other to flood the interface, often with repeated messages. Some repetitions used the term Spam in homage to a Monty Python skit, and so the name was continuously used from there on. So basically, this chapter talks all about Spam.

What I’ve learned:

    I have learned that the first ever Spam sent was in 1904, which was a telegram. I never even thought that spam existed that early. All the while, I thought it was just during the year 2000 when people rapidly started using Emails. Although Spam was born in the early 1900s, the term spam wasn’t actually used until the late 1900s where the term spam became the word for it. The most interesting that I’ve learned though is that 80% email traffic is spam, which is hard to believe but true.

Questions:

1.    Will spam ever be stopped?

2.    Where are the people at in stopping spam?

3.    If people can create viruses that destroy machines, Can’t people create a spam destroyer?

4.    What can be done as of the moment?

5.    How come the levels of spam mails you receive would depend on your email service?

Citation: (Kenneth Einar E. Himma & Herman T. Tavani, 2008)