[Air-l] Re: increase in SPAM

[Jennifer Stromer-Galley]

This conversation about spam resonates with me, particularly now as I try to
conduct interviews with people who participate on message boards and news
groups. 

I've found that my Usenet interviewees are quite weary of spam. Because they
participate on newsgroups and their email address is publicly visible, they
are often prime targets for spam. Since I've signed up to participate on
Usenet and on message boards, the level of spam I've received has gone from
0 to approximately 5 a week, most of it porn. 

Many of the people I interview set up a seperate email account, with hotmail
or yahoo, from their personal account so that they don't have to sift
through spam. Others add things like "nospam" into their email address (e.g.
john at smith.nospam.com). 

As a result of spam, people who receive my email request to be interviewed
may view it as spam and disregard it. I've found that if I send my request
twice, I get more responses, often with people apologizing for ignoring me
the first time because they figured it was just more spam. 

~Jenny Stromer-Galley
Annenberg School for Communication
University of Pennsylvania
jstromer at asc.upenn.edu
http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/jstromer