Disposable Email: Are they wrong?

The concept of disposable email accounts is quite simple. It refers to an account that is easily created, and easily disposed of. They are meant to be created at will,and disposed of that way, so that corruption by spam is never an issue.

This is a wonderful tool for the average internet user. They can join forums, request information, sign up for newsletters and so on, knowing that their real email address can never be compromised.

So how could there be anything wrong? Who would possibly complain?

Clearly, not every site is the evil Lord of Spam and they have no intention of using your address for anything but the intention for which they advertise. They take your goal when you sign on at face value.

When you delete your disposable email account, or if you merely deactivate it, these honest sites will continue to send you mail and include you in updates. This is a waste of time and resources, and it distorts their statistics..

Many sites are now trying to block users who use disposable identities, for just such a reason.

So on one hand users complain that revealing their addresses results in spam, as it surely does, and honest sites feel like they are being "taken". So where is the common ground?

I certainly agree that users have the right to protect themselves in any way they can. Its fact that many sites sell the addresses they get, so why ever reveal your contact information? The fairest thing to do I believe is to behave according to the "rules" of the site.

If you use a disposable email to sign up for an account, don't just delete the disposable when you are done. Act responsibly. Assume the registered site is acting likewise. Go back to your account and un-register. Or follow the link from the email you receive to do that same thing. THEN, delete the disposable email account.

In this way reputable sites will not be affected, Spamming sites will be stymied, and you will never receive the spam you so dread.

Only the bad guys lose.

The True Cost of Spam

Spam is certainly a nuisance. It clutters your mail box, makimg the important stuff harder to find. It causes you to miss out on something that may be important, and perhaps to delete “good” email because you are unsure as to its origins. Everything become suspect when you are a victem of spam.

To business, the cost is higher and more serious. A study done a short time ago revealed that the cost to email users exceeds 22 Billion dollrs annually. A very real cost.

Here are some of the implications of spam on your organization.

Hardware resources. This includes both your email servers and your network infrastructure. With upwards of 70% of mail on some large corporation’s email server being unwanted mail, this is a significant drain. It slows down mail delivery for important business mail, and requires industry to add more equipment and faster networks.

User time. Spam takes two forms. The first is the annoying penny stock advertisements, or the cheap drugs or herbal medications. These have been sent without being requested by the user.

The second is the unwanted mail received because at one time you asked to see the demo video of a product you were interested in. And now, these guys are your pen pals.

They are both unrequested mail, but many a user will open them, see what they contain, and maybe even read a couple. So even though they weren’t requested, they eat up precious employee time.

Employees willalso lose time looking for emails that may have accidentally slipped into a junk folder and for reviewing junk folders for “good” mail.

Viruses. With spam arriving at the users desktop, you have increased the risk of a virus coming with it. I have seen too many users being duped by subjecttitles, opening mail from people they don’t know, only to find out later tthey have infected the network. Your last hope after that is for an effective virus checker.

The cost of cleaning up is enormous once the virus is out of the bag.

The IT shop may have people dedicated to keeping filters up to date, verifying security, reading about the latest worm attempts. New products need to be purchased and upgraded to keep the filters current. All at cost to the organization.