Myspace…or YourSpace??

Ever since individual people and even companies realized how easy it became to make a profitable business from simply advertising, our web experiences have become much engaging. I say less engaging in the sense that we feel it to be a burden to check e-mails, or research without being bombarded with “pop-ups” and other advertisements. We are literally not able to enjoy our time on the web anymore. Sure we have 3409843092 times faster internet, but we did not have a fraction of the ads costing us billions of dollars a year in spam blocking software. A very good example of spamming on the internet would be myspace.com. As a website that allows us to personalize our own page however we like, it is extremely difficult to look past our best friends offering “special weight loss formulas” or “free 42” plasma televisions”. As Schwartz describes it, spamming is becoming “one of the most daunting computer science problems to come along in years”, not only creating a corporate barrier for many companies, but also threatening the existence of e-mail.
Schwartz acknowledges that spam is not uncommon. Actually spamming increases almost exponentially every year resulting in more money earned, but also more money spent. A clear example to show this would be the Austin College e-mail. Every week Austin College receives roughly 100,000 e-mails. Approximately 70,000 of those e-mails is spam and money is constantly being spent to prevent spam from seeping through. It is ridiculous how much spam and unwanted advertisements are let loose in the web, costing people more money for anti-spam and spam filtration software. We must also take into consideration that the Austin College student body and faculty are probably around 1500 people. When comparing to a much larger community such as Myspace, we can try to perceive the millions of advertisements being seen every day. Websites such as myspace.com make a profit by selling ad space on their site including the promotion of different genres of artists and events. Unfortunately, spammers and hackers can get into such networks and deliver their own advertisements for free.
When logging into myspace we have unlimited options to recreate our page however we like; uploading pictures, videos, blogs, etc. Though, whant happens when your page becomes an advertisement for a male enhancing product, or a weight loss formula. Myspace gives the opportunity for a type of basic e-mail called messaging. This is also similar to private messaging someone in a forum. These e-mails, interactions, and relationships made are what keeps myspace in business. Unfortunately hackers have found a way to invade our personal space and essentially link it to their own. When my best friend asks me if I want an all expense paid trip to Cancun for spring break, and I already know that he is going to be in Ohio a red flag raises for me. Hackers have found a way to pose as friends, and even family on myspace and attack us with such spam. Schwartz talks about how new spam software sometimes cannot keep up with the headlines that spam give themselves: “He Bill! Its Chad, I wanted to tell you about something I encountered today” Spam that reads like a normal e-mail is very tough to be caught, but on the contrary, normal e-mails are also likely to be deleted by such filters. Thus, unless drastic measures are taken to fight spamming, our web experiences will continue to be threatened more and more as time passes.
Another great feature that Myspace provides is the option to leave comments on someone else’s page. In essence, people can keep lines of communication open, but at the same time advertisers can take over your page and send links to all your friends about a product or event. accordingly, lines of communication are actually harder and more complicated to work around. This is not a terrible setback, but does technically impose a problem. As the president of Brookline, Barry Shein explains it, “Spammers are gaining complete control of the internet”. What we must understand is that they are literally taking it over. Spammers are literally gaining control of our myspace pages and incorporating spam within messages and comments. Myspace.com is a very good example to show how spam affects a networking atmosphere and how servers become overwhelmed by the extra work having to be done by spam-filtering software. Myspace after myspace is being taken over in the sense that spammers are forcing individual myspace page links to represent a specific advertisement or promotion. Unfortunately, spamming is becoming so intense for the web that research groups are thinking about charging for e-mails.
Although such a resolution would stop spamming significantly, it would also cost many normal people money. Also, as Schwarts accounts for us, “there is no federal law that prohibits unconsolidated commercial e-mail”. therefore, the barrier to get around spam will be a tough one, but if we can develop very good spam software sometime in the future we will be fine. Until then, large corporations must begin investing again into anti-spam software. This increases the software provider’s revenue. The more software being purchased means the more different types of spam are hitting our myspaces and e-mails all across the world. The more types of spam mean more money for the spammer, as well as a very fine reason to keep doing what they are doing. The longer the spammers keep doing what they are doing, the longer our society stays locked in this era. Thus, is this really my space, or is it your space as well?