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Inbox / Charles Bermant
858 messages — and none worth saving

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No person or program can ever determine the value of e-mail for anyone else.

Which is why all filtering programs that send possible spam mail to a separate folder require that you regularly audit the results to ensure the "artificial intelligence" is doing a good job and that no important messages are designated for the trash bin.

In fact, this task is one you may as well skip and is probably necessary only for people who are extremely bored or have a low self-concept, needing to know that someone likes them enough to send along a greeting.

It has been a busy few months here at Inbox Central, with no time to poke around in the junk-mail folder to see if there is anything important. So I haven't even thought to take on this particular task. Until today.

I found 858 messages tucked away since Nov. 6. Looking at all of them in one sitting is surreal.

Some are attempting to sell cheap software (Photoshop for $40) or a genuine fake Rolex.

There are business opportunities galore, and plenty of pictures of people with outsized body parts. There is the chance to become similarly outsized. And there are a few notes from acquaintances and public-relations people deemed unworthy by the arbiter of spam.

I also sense trends. These armchair entrepreneurs only go through the motions. They don't actually believe you are going to buy anything from them.

It's like the kid I saw outside the local market the other day who said, "You don't want to buy a candy bar for charity, do you?" No, kid, and I'll bet you grow up to be a spammer.

And if it were possible, spammers' spelling has gotten even worse.

I don't know anyone who would trust the delicacies of their love life to "vigara" or trust their sensitive files to "Microsooft Offfice XP Prrofessional."

Perhaps the cheap version doesn't include a spell-checker.

Spammers, we are told, deliberately misspell the keywords most likely to trigger a filter and send the message to the trash.

Since many people may flag Viagra, an alternative spelling evolved. Still, it's hard to imagine anyone buying from someone who can't spell the product correctly.

Of these 858 screened messages, there were none from old friends or people who wanted to hire me for anything. This becomes a waste of space. I may as well filter all the junk messages to the deleted folder, and program it to empty after every restart.

Of course, there is a chance that something important will get filtered out. But so what? If it's so critical, the sender can call or send another message.

Nothing has really changed since the e-mail's first tentative steps, where you are never sure a message reaches its mark or the recipient will dodge behind technology failures to say it never arrived.

If you have questions or suggestions for Charles Bermant, you can contact him by e-mail at cbermant@seattletimes.com. Type Inbox in the subject field. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists.

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