I usually start my work day each morning my looking at my e-mail.
It’s painful, but I figure I’d better get it over with early because If I don’t, I can’t keep up with the junk that keeps piling in all day.
At the start of a typical day, my inbox has 350 messages. Usually about 200 of those are true junk — multiple copies of messages tagged with things like : crazy price, quality assured, Web site developers.
Why someone would think I would do business with anyone who jams up my inbox with such drivel is a mystery to me.
Another 75 or so messages will be what I call individual junk mail — things I don’t get multiple copies of, but are still pretty worthless. The bad part is that I actually have to look at them to make sure they’re worthless.
The rest I would consider messages that might be valid to somebody, although most of them don’t mean anything to me. Maybe 10 of the entire crop are messages I need or would want to see.
The Symantec Corp., the company that makes its living providing some high-tech security services, says I’m pretty average. In October, about 76 percent of the world’s world e-mails were junk, the company estimated in its monthly spam report. That’s up 6 percent from October 2007, but down from August, when spam levels hit 80 percent.
I don’t know about you, but that really ticks me off. I’m both saddened and infuriated that such a marvelous communication tool is loaded up with so much garbage.
The company looked at worldwide spam in October and categorized it in this way: Financial, 18 percent; adult, 6 percent; fraud, 4 percent; health 16 percent; Internet, 22 percent; leisure, 6 percent; political, 3 percent; products 18 percent; scams 7 percent.
I’m not sure whether the pills people are always trying to sell me are a fraud, a scam, health, products or leisure. I just wish they would stop.
Geographically, the United States is its own worst enemy. Nearly 30 percent of the world’s spam comes from here. We’re followed, oddly enough, by Turkey, 8 percent; Russia, 7 percent; and China, South Korea and India, each at 4 percent.
October messages included things like a fake gift card offering for recipients who fill out what was described as a presidential election survey. What the scammers were really trying to do was to gather personal financial information so they could steal your identity.
There were also quite a few scams for online games offering chances to “win money for Christmas.”
And October included yet another lottery scam. This one talks about the FIFA World Cup, which opens in South Africa in 2010. It offers $800,000 to a “lucky” e-mail recipient from what it called a drawing established by the events organizing committee.
I’ve said this before, but it deserves repeating. These international lottery e-mails are all junk. Nobody ever wins anything from this trash. Typically, they’re intended to trick you into paying some kind of administrative fee before you receive your so-called winnings, or to convince you to provide financial information so your credit cards can be looted.
Trash this stuff.
We’ll have to wait until January to see which scams are coming our way this month. As the holidays approach, you can count on several that will tug at your heartstrings and a continuation on the theme of winning money for Christmas.
Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459; benbow@heraldnet.com
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