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You can have an email inbox that receives virtually no spam. It’s true, and it doesn’t mean you have to never give out your email address to anyone. What would be the point? After all, the great thing about email is what a fast and effective means of communication it is.

There are a lot of reasons why spam exists, and I’m going to share some of those with you now. The thing that’s going to be hard for you to swallow is that it is your fault you get so much of it in your box every day.

We want to blame all of this on wicked little men somewhere (maybe they are green) who get e mail addresses by illegitimate means and then shell us with bombs of offensive advertising goop. The reality is far different.

But let’s look at why spam exists, then we will know how better to go about getting rid of it.

First, spam is there because it works. I really hate to admit it, but it does. In all forms of marketing there is a thing called a response rate. When a sales guy send out sales letters in the regular mail (not much different than electronic spam) he knows that about 1% of the letters he sends will generate a response. That may not sound all that great, but it can make you a profit.

With electronic spam, the results are even lower, but there is always some response rate. The appeal over other forms of mass advertising is the cost: it’s virtually nothing. You can send millions of emails in about two minutes and you’ve paid for electricity. I know it’s over-simplified, but you get the picture.

A really good bulk mail campaign can cost the sender over two bucks each to send the flyer/letter/postcard. A really good email campaign can cost the sender . . .

So you step into their shoes for a moment (a horrid thought but bear with me). Why spend a hundred thousand dollars to send out one hundred thousand letters, when you can send out one million emails for a little less than one thousand bucks? That’s a no-brainer folks.

Second, spamming solicitations are here to stay because it is so hard to prosecute violations. People don’t abuse the regular mail system much because the penalties for doing so are investigated by the FBI and you just don’t mess with those guys.

In cyber-space, spam is regulated by the FTC. Not exactly scary, and there are hundreds of ways around the laws that do exist, and even more ways to garbage lawyer out of a tight spot in the legal definitions.

Even those American firms who are basically law-abiding might simply hire a Tibetan spam team to do the spamming. I hear extradition from Lhasa for internet misbehavior is pretty tough. Well it’s downright impossible, ok?

So if it works, and it’s nearly impossible to stop, then what can you do about it? Well, you’ll never stop it completely, but you can cut it down to the point where you get less spam in your email than you do in your mailbox. And I’m just the guy to show you how to do it.