The new year is upon us, and if you\u2019ve been buried amidst mounds of wrapping paper, stuffed turkeys and egg-nog, it\u2019s likely that you\u2019ve welcomed the sense of normalcy that comes with the end of the holidays. But normalcy usually means returning to all the things we don\u2019t particularly  relish doing, like getting up for work, paying bills, and fighting with our inboxes for dominance over our digital lives. It\u2019s 2013 now, and the Mayan Apocalypse passed without so much as a sneeze out of the gods of the Yucatan Peninsula, but it\u2019s a safe bet that some of you wish the prophecies had been true as the rush of spam email comes at you once again in a fast and furious fashion. Baby New Year hasn\u2019t even had a chance to spit up on our shoulders, and already the feverish wave of after-holiday sales are clogging our email clients and giving them new reasons to be pissed off at the application developers who wrote them.<\/p>\n

A Brief History of Spam, or Douchebags are People, Too <\/strong><\/h2>\n

Spam email has its beginnings in the original days of Hotmail (i.e., before Microsoft bought them), when the masses were given an opportunity, for the first time, to try out this newfangled thingy called email. With the sudden rash of free email users, it wasn\u2019t long before they made their way onto the scene \u2013chain letters, fake marketing pitches from someone calling himself Bill Gates, and heartfelt pleas from Nigerian princes. At first a nuisance \u2013 except to those who bought into the Nigerian 419 scams<\/a> \u2013 spam was largely just that: a nuisance. It wasn\u2019t long, however, until hackers found a way to incorporate binary attachments into their poison pen letters, and the sick, twisted little dance between spammers and email users began in earnest.<\/p>\n

And for many years, that\u2019s exactly what the landscape looked like. Cheesy implorations that anyone with an IQ slightly north of a hammer\u2019s would never fall for, dangerous little pockets of malware that could be devastating if errantly activated, and sales pitches, more confusing than anything else because they made absolutely no sense. But the paradigm\u2019s changed in the past few years. Phishing became a malevolent yet effective tool for parting a fool from his money, and scams have become more intelligent and more targeted. Somewhere along the way, the douchebag spammers got smart. Fortunately, spam filters got smarter, too, and the ongoing waltz continues as a cat-and-mouse game to see who can adapt quicker.<\/p>\n

But Wait! There\u2019s More<\/strong><\/h2>\n

If the scenario above is the status quo, then \u2018legitimate\u2019 marketers have managed to douse the dance floor with Teflon. Spammers haven\u2019t changed. They want your money and they\u2019ll break any law they can to get it. Users continue to fight the good fight, through vigilance, strong anti-spam algorithms, and more than a little bit of patience<\/a>. But marketers \u2013 the people who don\u2019t hide in the light of day because they actually do have something to sell you \u2013 have gotten far more aggressive. Between the early 1990\u2019s and 2013, somewhere along the way, the definition of email spam has changed.<\/p>\n

Users really don\u2019t care who sent the email. If it\u2019s unwanted, then it\u2019s spam. In 2013, that invariably means marketers, who aren\u2019t new to the time-honored art of bothering people, are the new villains. If you don\u2019t believe it, then go ahead and Google it. There are industry associations out there which exist for the sole purpose of helping anyone who has something to sell. They work hard to figure out how to get their messages past the spam filters and into your inbox. Not to besmirch those associations, there are plenty of people who want to know when their favorite tchotchkes go on sale. But as the world has gone digital in the past twenty or so years, a critical mass has been reached, and now even the most unnecessary items have become worthy of an email or ten.<\/p>\n

Where Does it Stop?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Christmas creep has gotten worse<\/a>, and if you\u2019re anything like this writer, you\u2019ve probably rolled your eyes a few times at the ridiculous number of sales this time of the year. Boxing Day sales. After Christmas sales. New Year\u2019s sales. After the holidays sales. And so-on.<\/p>\n

Consumers have had enough<\/a>. And that\u2019s troubling for everyone, because the spammers won\u2019t stop. Email marketing is relatively free, certainly far cheaper than paying for TV, radio, direct mailers, and other methods that marketers have traditionally used. In 2013, there is a new enemy on the battlefield, and all he\u2019s managed to do is make the field far more treacherous for everyone involved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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