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There's nothing worse than walking out to your mailbox, eagerly anticipating a letter from your sweet Aunt Sue about her latest corn removal procedure, and finding your box stuffed with nothing but a pile of mass-mailed advertisements and doctored pictures of missing children. Just as junk mail is the scourge of pole-and-flag mailboxes, spam is the blight of the virtual e-mailbox.
There are programs that put your email account back in your hands and out of the meddling grasp of invasive advertisers. The programs are lobbying Congress to impose stricter laws on Web advertisers, preventing them from utilizing an "opt-out" system of email reminders and updates.
Currently, websites who have gained access to your email information can keep sending you crap upon crap until you visit their site and opt-out of their advertising campaign. No one has time for that. I barely have time to scream at my goldfish.
Again, there are programs that allow you to check categories or companies from whom you wish to receive emailed product updates and special offers. The companies themselves do not have access to your email information. They send the messages to that specific program, which then forwards them to you.
Under the site's strict "don't ask, don't tell" policy, there are no private questions to answer during registration, and therefore no juicy dirt to sell to advertisers. Just your email address and areas of interest -- anything from beauty to gambling. Boy, do they know my interests or what?
To stop receiving mail, you just go back to the site and press the stop button. Yes, the days of deleting rows of spam may soon be a thing of the past. No more clutter to hide the fact that you have no real messages, and therefore no real friends. Oh, wait.
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