Oct 5, 2003 | Q
For those who haven’t grown so irritated by junk email as to seize at the mere thought of it, the Boston Globe Sunday magazine has a good article by Neil Swidey on the history and the future of the fight against spam. Sitting here with 1,980 messages collected in my spam folder since the Friday morning, I can see why the mainstream press is starting to talk about the problem. I’ve wondered something, though — with the email addresses of most members of Congress available online, do you think that there’s a spam filter running on the House and Senate mail servers? If so, is there someone who trawls through the filtered messages, making sure that email from constituents doesn’t get thrown in the can?
A few months ago, didn’t the White House stop accepting email from the public, requiring a web form instead? I believe some Congresspeople have taken a similar step to stop junk mail. I imagine this is considered better than being accused of running filters that might conceivably filter out legitimate mail.
• Posted by: brian w on Oct 5, 2003, 8:45 PM