Steve's CS855 School Blog

Tonight's post doesn't deal directly with Web 2.0 tools, but more on Web X.X itself.

I read with some fascination yesterday, that the value of United Airline's stock had plummeted for a short time, based on bogus Internet data. Paperwork from United's filing of bankruptcy 2 or 3 years ago, popped up again as if it we some new thing, scaring investors and leading to a quick sell off of the stock. Fortunately, somebody paying attention to the documents noticed the date and put an end to it. The whole situation brings to light, the dangers of having such an interconnected world today.

The Internet allows information to spread around the globe at the speed of light, yet has no mechanism for ensuring that information is valid. It makes me wonder how many people use information from the various news portals, stock tracking pages, weather sites, and other supposedly accurate sources, to guide their life decisions. I cannot find any data on how much data on web sites is valid, but I think the amount of spam mail can be a guide.

Spam mail, or unsolicited commercial email, is becoming a menace to society. According to the web site SpamUnit (http://www.spamunit.com/spam-statistics/) , there were an estimated 100 billion spam emails sent every day, as of June 2007 (note: I can’t attest to the validity of this website either). I saw a report at work earlier this week, showing the amount of spam as a percentage of all emails, for different countries around the world. Almost every country on the list received between 83 – 88% of all mail as spam. This to me is an amazing number. Most of this mail advertises unbelievable claims about common human perceived problems (too fat, too small, too something else), yet people keep sending in money to support these companies.

So the big question that comes to mind is, how do we fix this? Well, unfortunately, you’ll have to wait for another blog entry to see that answer.

-steve