Technology brings with it many advantages and wonderful inventions for humanity but certain worries accompany it too. In this technologically driven world we’ve gotten used to what this means and have come to accept it…whether good or bad. Just like life we’ve learned to take the smooth with the rough and in many instances adapted to change. An eighteenth century time traveller would find our present dispensation otherworldly to say the least. Concepts that make for the life of the twenty-first century citizen would be inconceivable to them.
Take for instance the electronic mailing service (a.k.a. email), that allows us access to messages from all over the world at our behest. We keep in touch with friends, colleagues, family, acquaintances and even frenemies in far-flung lands. The important, curious, trivial and downright inconsequential is available. It’s imperative we check our mails regularly and for some it’s a compulsion for which there’s no cure.
Email marketing, unsolicited commercial mails in varied forms await us. Some we welcome and may have subscribed to, others turn up uninvited and constitute a nuisance. The top of the list (for some) are the obviously pornographic invites, for others the mails from fraudsters top it all! Cheerful mails inviting purchase of one thing or the other also rank pretty high.
For me the most annoying is the mail that gives me information on how to secure my bank account from electronic fraud, change my online information and how to use their website safely for transactions. This would be really useful if I had an account with the financial institution that sent it! I’ve never opened an account, not dreamt of it and don’t even see it in the foreseeable future, but I still get the mail. This mail is sent regularly, unfortunately there’s no place to unsubscribe.
Yes, everyone wants new clients and business…I get that but how in the world does that translate into sending security directives to someone that has no relationship with you? I also understand that fraudsters are also heavily involved in this atrocity but not every time. Personally I also believe that some of these organisations also do it deliberately. They decide to use electronic channels to market and find agents with access to certain data of specific demographics.So real estate companies, telcos, banks, mortgage institutions, higher institutions et al send messages tantamount to spam daily.
Unfortunately spam is no longer restricted to inboxes of emails and has to transitioned to sms. This is further exacerbated because mails and text messages are all received on handheld mobile devices. Phones efficiently deliver both to people on the go and regular unwelcome interruptions take place daily. Obsessive compulsives that check their messages more often could also get more annoyed quickly too.
Quite a number of these companies have a data base (if they don’t they should) of their customers but they seem to overlook it! I really don’t understand the point of having intelligence and then ignoring it…it really makes no sense! A few months ago I received a message from the bank I used during my NYSC. This is over a decade ago but they still had my data. I was very impressed although I had no intention of resuscitating our relationship.
As far as I was concerned that’s a great way to use data. Not the current antics of irritating potential clients under the guise of ‘email marketing’ or whatever. Labels are a dime a dozen, but lazy is obvious and this is what we get as spam from those that should know better. Agree, disagree or what do you think?
