Spam attack - Dealing with information overload

ou've got mail. Tons of it, in fact. Maybe more than you can handle.

But you're not alone with your e-mail information overload. Industry analysts estimate that the average U.S. worker gets about 30 e-mails a day, which is 50 percent more than they got a year ago.

And, with predictions that it could increase to more than 100 a day within the next two years, it looks like it's only going to get worse.

"It is annoying, and it is time consuming," said Carolyn Kempf, owner of Elite Travel in Cape Girardeau, who sometimes gets as many as 200 e-mails a day. "I'm getting twice as many as I got last year and I just keep getting more and more -- 70 percent of the e-mails I get are junk. It's frustrating."

It's more than frustrating. For many companies, managers and workers, dealing with superfluous e-mails has become a major daily task.

Beth Keller is an employee recruiter at St. Francis Medical Center and one of the hospital's 250 e-mail users. Most days, Keller receives more than 20 e-mails a day.

"I try to go in first thing in the morning and respond to questions or check on applications, whatever I know I have to do right away," said Keller. "I try to check it two or three times a day, but no more than that. You can spend hours sitting there trying to go through it all if you're not careful."

'It's called the delete key'

Betty Martin, the director of the Cape Girardeau Public Library, said she's been choosy about the lists she's signed up for, though she has received more than 80 e-mails in one day.

"But I'm careful about how much time I spend with it," she said. "I try not to spend more than 20 minutes a day, so the day doesn't get away from me. I only read professional stuff, and the rest I trash without even looking at it."

Joni Adams, the Web master at Southeast Missouri Hospital, offers this simple solution: "It's called the delete key."

"I really don't even read them," Adams said of the e-mails. "I judge them from the subject line, and I can tell. The ones that say something about a mortgage, a great business plan or saving me money, I delete those immediately."

Unsolicited junk e-mail, called spam, is a growing part of the often maxed-out e-mails. Some of these spam e-mails even include pornographic material.

"Those are the ones that are upsetting," Kempf said. "I don't visit those sites or condone that, but somehow they've gotten me. The headings are offensive, they use vulgar language, but they got my e-mail address somehow."

Harvesting addresses

The so-called "spammers" harvest e-mail addresses from various posts that e-mailers make as well as from mailing lists, Web pages, browsers and chat rooms.

Mix those messages in with personal e-mails from friends and family as well as jokes, chain e-mails, and gags, and some managers take steps to make sure that e-mail doesn't hurt productivity.

"The purpose of having e-mail is that it is to be used for business purposes," said Steve Taylor, president of Bank of America in the Cape Girardeau/Jackson area. "We have policies for anything that wouldn't be appropriate."

At Edward Jones, the brokerage firm in Cape Girardeau, e-mail is limited mostly to an internal system, which routes e-mail from its Web page to employees, said investment representative Donna Domian.

Domian said they don't want their representatives dealing with clients via e-mail anyway.

"I don't get e-mail from clients," she said. "I get real mail from my clients, real phone calls. I work face-to-face with individual investors. I'm not bothered by e-mail at work, and I'm glad I'm not."

Gene Magnus, who owns Clas Computers in Cape Girardeau, said businesses should have a written policy that employees understand.

"If a piece of mail comes in -- Playmate of the Month, or whatever -- it's a lawsuit waiting to happen if somebody walks by and sees it," Magnus said. "Every company has issues that need to be addressed."

Magnus said the written policy should let employees know that any e-mail that comes in belongs to the company. Computers also should be subject to audits at any time, Magnus said.

Southeast Missouri State University sees about 26,000 messages a day, said Archie Sprengel, assistant director of computer services.

Sprengel said some of the spam messages can be cut down on by using a filtering service, which can block unwanted e-mails before they make it to mailboxes.

Some popular filters are provided by America Online, AT&T World Net, and Yahoo. E-mail providers also provide filters, which can let subscribers know which e-mails are spam. Spam can also be reported at spamcop.com.

Hard to control

Spam may be the most reviled by-product of the Internet, but controlling it has proven slippery. Lawmakers have so far struggled to create effective anti-spam legislation, and technology has offered only limited relief.

"You can try to unsubscribe, but I think that only lets them know you exist," said Sprengel. "They know for sure then that it's an actual account. They ignore that you were trying to un-subscribe and keep sending you stuff anyway."

But Sprengel said spam must not be giving everyone electronic indigestion.

"If nobody wanted this stuff and nobody ever replied, then it would stop," he said. "Someone's making money on it or it just wouldn't continue."

Sprengel said the problem of excess e-mail is just another by-product of the information age.

"People really enjoyed the time when the newspaper and television were their main source of news," he said. "But nowadays news is constant. You can't get away from the stuff. People have pagers, cell phones, the Internet. You can't even take a vacation."

While some complain about the bulk of e-mail they get, most said it didn't mean they wanted to go back to "snail mail."

"E-mail is here to stay," Adams said. "It's so convenient and so time-sensitive. It's growing by leaps and bounds, and I don't see that changing."

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137