Stop the spam

The other email was from one woman to whom I’d unwittingly given my email address during a private industry launch (look, she said she was an accountant, ok!). This particular missive invited me and 85 other people I’ve never met to partake in unison of wine and cheese and networking opportunities.

But the 152 new addresses delivered to my email box in one morning is nothing. In fact, I’ve received messages from PR account managers and record company press officers with their entire database of press contacts plastered across the To: section of their email.

In case the simple pleasures of earning an honest living ever start to wane, my alternative future as a direct email marketer could well be secure.

Have you ever wondered why you get email from people you've never met, offering you money you'll never earn? Well, think about this.

And on almost every occasion, the message has been accompanied by a string of email addresses of people I don’t know. All this despite the fact that Brandeis University was forced to close down that address in 1998, ‘due to a flood of hundreds of thousands of messages in response to an unauthorised chain letter’.

Of course, we’d like to support the cause of women in Afghanistan but it would be more effective for us to do so by lobbying our local MP or offering support, financially or otherwise, to a group campaigning for such causes.