So Maybe Spam Is Not Inevitable

This news is so huge I had to pass it along as soon as it came to my attention. Lunch over IP: So maybe spam is not inevitable introduces the story about how Brian Krebs, a journalist/blogger for the Washington Post exposed a San Jose, CA company, McColo, as responsible for up to 75% of all spam...worldwide.

The implications are huge. As pointed out, this goes toward legitimizing email marketing and making communicating via email once again truly useful, and could very well point the way to winning the game of "find the spammer."

It may also mean that I will no longer be interrupted and asked if I'm a spammer when I respond to the question, "And, what do you do?" I'm constantly reminded that even though most in the tech industry view providing the Web-based technology to send massive quantities of email and manage all the resulting data as mundane, there are many, many people who are still pretty clueless as to how it is they receive all those HTML emails from Target and Macy's in their inboxed, that "spam" is not a word to describe an email they weren't in the mood to receive today, that if email went away tomorrow we'd feel a real sense of loss.

Anyway, click through, read the short article, and then, click through again to read the full (only slightly longer) report at Good Morning Silicon Valley.