E-mail is under attack. Not from its enemies, but from its friends.
From legitimate spyware to criminal phishing, scam artists are out to sell us, cripple us, and rob us blind, and are using e-mail as their primary vehicle. It wasn’t always like this. Years ago, everything was cool and e-mail was a fun, albeit unstable, curiosity. Then, a few malicious viruses got our attention and we became wary of opening anything with an attachment. The minute a MyDoom or Sasser hit the Internet and we all muttered our collective “…the hell?!” we were forced to re-think and re-tool. But once again, the ne’er-do-wells elevated their game to the point where, today, we’ve become afraid to open anything that we don’t recognize. Of course, now that e-mail clients are more sophisticated, we can set up rules to handle e-mail that originates from an unknown source. But for most of us, that’s just going a bit too far. We’re excited about the possibility of receiving an unexpected e-mail from a high school chum, an old co-worker, or Ed McMahon. And we resent the idea of having to pre-scan every piece of e-mail that finds its way to our In Box. It’s enough to make you long for the days of good ol’ harmless junk mail. Whereas you can just throw junk mail in the trash bin, getting a virus-laden e-mail is like opening a piece of junk mail that immediately burns your house down.
You’d think that if anyone wanted to discourage us from using e-mail, it would be the U.S. Postal Service. After all, e-mail has cut into the Post Office’s revenue stream quite a bit in recent years (25 percent, by some estimates). But of all the spammers and hackers captured and prosecuted by the Attorney General’s office in recent months, not one of them has worked for the Post Office. It’s just not their style. When postal employees fight back, they reach for machine guns, not buffer overruns. In fact, considering the way that e-mail has picked its pocket, the Post Office hasn’t really raised its rates all that much. When I was in college, I think it cost a quarter to send a letter first class. Today, it’s 37 cents. Big deal. That’s an increase of less than a penny a year. Just try to send a postcard across the street in Germany. It costs one mark — about 68 cents. I’m not sure how many euros that is, but it’s outrageous.
So where is this e-mail business going anyway?
Google thinks it has the answer with its Gmail service, which is rumored to do away with both banners and pop-up ads. That should help somewhat. A lot of spyware infects my PC through legitimate ads that I often have misclicked on. I also like Gmail’s idea of providing a gigabyte of storage. Soon after the Gmail Beta was released last May, both Hotmail and Yahoo increased their storage space tenfold to 250 MB per account. Overnight, I went from running at 75 percent capacity on my Hotmail account to about 4 percent. So even though I don’t have a Gmail account, I’ve already benefited from Google’s chutzpah.
But if Gmail is ever going to be more than just a value-added service to Google, it will have to make a profit some day. And if they continue to turn down revenue from pop-ups and banners, they could begin charging users for the service. Will it be worth it? Maybe. But if I can still get a Hotmail or Yahoo account for free, I might be willing to deal with a few pesky pop-up ads, spyware and all.
We’ve already grown up quite a bit. Not long ago (maybe two years), I was weary of checking my Hotmail account because I’d get 150 spams a day, and I’d have to filter through them manually. Today, it’s not really a problem. I get maybe 20 spams a day, and about 90 percent of those go straight to a Junk Mail folder. I didn’t set up any of this, I just upgraded my MSN client one day and there it was.
So slowly but surely, the big boys like Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google are getting it right. At this point, it’s mostly reactive. See a fire, put it out. But as technology advances and competition becomes keener, e-mail developers will shift to a proactive mindset and figure out how to stop problems before they start. At least…that’s what I’m hoping.
How and when will this shift occur? No idea. But remember the old axiom: technology breeds technology. We may just find the answer to our e-mail woes while trying to solve some other crisis.
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