email-risks-3

INFORMATION OVERLOAD

Information overload

A December 2007 New York Times blog post described E-mail as "a $650 Billion Drag on the Economy",
and the New York Times reported in April 2008 that "E-MAIL has become
the bane of some people’s professional lives" due to information
overload, yet "none of [the current wave of high-profile Internet
startups focused on email] really eliminates the problem of e-mail
overload because none helps us prepare replies".

Technology investors reflect similar concerns.

Spamming and computer viruses

The usefulness of e-mail is being threatened by four phenomena: e-mail bombardment, spamming, phishing, and e-mail worms.

Spamming is unsolicited commercial e-mail. Because of the very low
cost of sending e-mail, spammers can send hundreds of millions of
e-mail messages each day over an inexpensive Internet connection.
Hundreds of active spammers sending this volume of mail results in information overload for many computer users who receive voluminous unsolicited email each day.^[27][28]

E-mail worms use e-mail as a way of replicating themselves into vulnerable computers. Although the first e-mail worm affected UNIX computers, the problem is most common today on the more popular Microsoft Windows operating system.

The combination of spam and worm programs results in users receiving
a constant drizzle of junk e-mail, which reduces the usefulness of
e-mail as a practical tool.

A number of anti-spam techniques mitigate the impact of spam. In the United States, U.S. Congress has also passed a law, the Can Spam Act of 2003,
attempting to regulate such e-mail. Australia also has very strict spam
laws restricting the sending of spam from an Australian ISP, but its impact has been minimal since most spam comes from regimes that seem reluctant to regulate the sending of spam.
On Fast Track
with
Dr. Ashok Koparday