A Spammer is Spoofing My Email Address

How fun.  Imagine my delight to wake up the last couple of days to find thousands of bounced emails - all with my address in the From: line.  It's such an honor to see my address associated with other legitimate brands that are so proven in the fields of appendage enlargement. 

Here's what happens...

A spammer needs to send spam emails and they don't want to use an address associated with them.  So, they add someone else's address to the From: field of the email.  When the email bounces, it comes to the person's address. In this case, me.

Very into the Very Short List

At the moment Google reader tells me that I have 490 unread items. Once again my feeds are mocking me.  The problem is that of the 490, I'll think 4.9 were really interesting. Such is the blog world I suppose. This kind of minor overload is one of the reasons I love the Very Short List. 

The Big UNsubscribe

How long has it been since you really thought about all the things you subscribe to in email? The newsletters, the notifications, the email lists. It's so easy to delete the old stuff when it comes in that you might be used to doing just that - deleting instead of unsubscribing.

I've spent the last couple of weeks unsubscribing from everything and I was amazed at the sheer number of things that came in, but always went unread. My guess is there were 25-30 different newsletters and updates. I had no idea.

My advice is to be aware and remove the things you're not reading if you have a choice. It's quite liberating. Now, if I can just figure out how to unsubscribe from spam, I'll be all set.

New Tool: Create RSS Feeds via Email

As many of you may know- RSS is a way for you to "subscribe" to a web site so that you are notified whenever something new is posted. More and more sites are creating RSS "feeds" that allow you to subscribe to them without providing an email address. You need a newsreader to "subscribe".(More on RSS basics here)

This entry will describe how you can create an RSS feed and then post information to the feed by sending an email to a specific address.

Bill Gates Says Email Not Dead.

Informatics: Gates foretells death of spam

Ok, he didn't say those exact words, but he's a believer that technology will eventually beat spammers. He recently spoke at ITU Telecom World 2003 in Geneva.

He called on anonymity to be removed from internet protocols like SMTP, because it allows spammers to mimic other users, and suggested that passwords could be replaced by smart cards and biometric technologies.

"We have to know who is accessing the network. By being able to identify who the sender is we will be able to make the spam problem essentially go away," he said.

Let's hope he's right.

Banning Email is a Bad Idea

News.com reported recently that the CEO of Phones 4 U has banned email in the office.

"I saw that e-mail was insidiously invading Phones 4U, so I banned it immediately," Caudwell said in a statement. "Phones 4U staff have been told to get off the keyboards, get face-to-face or on to the phone to colleagues.

While I can certainly see how email can waste time, this seems extreme. This CEO is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Here are some things that I think are bad about a policy like this and how I think Phone 4U shoulde handle it:

Forcing Synchronous Communication

What if Email Went Away?

InfoWorld: E-mail's special power: September 12, 2003: By Jon Udell

I really liked this article about email. Jon Udell asks what would happen if all email crashed- what would we use to replace it?

By asking these questions, he helps to define the best uses of email. By looking at a world without email, we begin to see how other technologies like RSS, Weblogs, Instant Messaging etc. can fill in the gaps. But, most importantly, it shows what gaps cannot be filled. The result is what email is best at doing- its special power...

Marketing Sherpa Says: Email Not Dead

MarketingSherpa.com : Email Survey Says Email Not Dead

According to 2,327 marketers in-the-field who reported their data in last week's MarketingSherpa Email Metrics Survey, email is not dead yet. Not even close to dying. (Not even coughing a little.)

Last week I said email is not dead and I was happy to see these results. The writers say that companies are learning to measure and test more effectively and this is contributing to better rates.

Email is NOT Dead

Warning- Idealistic Rant Ahead.

There seems to be cacophony of folks out there proclaiming email is dead. While I know they are being sensationalist about it, I think the idea is absurd. I think it is temporarily polluted and perhaps unwieldy, but not dead.