Coffee Break: Useless spam messages clog the wheels of business

The state of Virginia has taken a stand against unsolicited commercial e-mail, also known as spam. Anyone who sends spam by deceptive means to or from Virginia could face felony criminal penalties.

Knowing very little about Virginia, that legislation alone almost makes me want to move there. Almost. Before I pull up stakes and head for the spam-free zone, I'm giving the state of Missouri time to address its proposed No Spam list. The No Spam list would be structured along the same lines as the No Call list that keeps pesky telemarketers out of my life.

Don't get me wrong. I don't object to the Internet as a selling tool. I do object to aggressive e-mail marketing that, without my permission, takes up my valuable time my company's time to pitch me products and services I don't want or need.

Spam is not legitimate, ethical business marketing.

At the Business Journal, I get an average of 80 to 100 e-mails per day. Only two months ago, I would have estimated I was receiving about 60 to 70 e-mails per day. Two-thirds of what I was getting two months ago was spam; I guarantee the increase since then is nothing but spam.

What does this mean to me?

Processing information is a big part of what I do. We receive literally hundreds of faxes and mail messages each week, in addition to the e-mail.

I recently handed off the duty of sorting mail and faxes to reporter Jennifer Brown. This was supposed to give me more time to tend to managerial duties make long-range plans, enhance employee skills, improve processes and procedures, etc.

Instead, it just gives me more time to sort through spam.

Separating the wheat from the chaff getting the good e-mail to my writers and editors so they can use that information to produce a newspaper is ever more challenging as the kernels of wheat are drown in an ocean of chaff.

What does spam do for me as a businessperson? It wastes a minimum of half an hour out of every day, assuming I take the time to dispose of it on a daily basis.

I've tried putting it off forwarding the important stuff and letting the sleeping Viagra ads lie but this just wastes my time in a big block when I finally have to delete it all. It also wastes valuable server space, since the messages have to be stored until I delete them.

Most of them I delete without opening. But I don't delete anything without checking the subject line and return address, because it just might be a legitimate question, comment or press release.

It's easy to sort out the worst of the trash the prescription ads, porn sites, mortgage offers, cable descramblers, get-rich-quick schemes, credit repair, hacked passwords and my new favorite, spam that advertises spam filters.

The spam I hate most is messages with deceptive subject lines. Messages labeled "Hello" or "Hi" turn out to be spam for pornography or a mortgage loan site.

A message headed, "You are the best" isn't a commentary on the quality of the Business Journal but an ad for enhancing the size of genitalia I don't even have.

These are the messages I can't just toss. I have to take the time to open them, look at them and then toss them.

Until something happens to address the problem in Missouri, I like to think there's a special place in Hell for spammers.

Barring that, I can at least take comfort in knowing there's a place for them in the Virginia correctional system.