United Nations War on Spam

When the United Nations was formed in 1945 its charter read…

• to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,…
• to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person,..
• to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
• to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
  

One of the issues tackled by the UN in Athens this month was the international threat of SPAM. A new initative to gather information and resources on combating spam called StopSpamAlliance.org was created.

My first thought was “What?” Shouldn’t the UN be dealing with middle east peace or stopping the genocide in Africa. Those actually may be easier problems to fix than spam.

Upon reflection, I’m encouraged that someone at an international level is looking at the problem of spam. There have been a lot of articles recently on how spam has increased.

SunbeltBLOG: “SPAM. Yeah, it’s up”
the INQUIRER: “Ten people create 80 per cent of spam”
PC World, Steve Bass: “Spam is Up, Up, Up”
InfoWorld: “Botnet Spam Getting Out of Hand”

I don’t need anyone to tell me how much my spam was increased. I’m really tired of ads for Tora,Tora,Tora, X-tra Petroleum or other stocks, viagra, rolex watches, loans, hoodia and especially e-mails which invite me to click one of their links. I’m pretty good at detecting spam based on the subject line but have accidently deleted more valid Email this month than I have all year. Who knows, maybe the UN can help.

“Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. “
- John F. Kennedy