Like everybody who will ever read this, I get spam in my e-mail. Mine seems to fall into one of three categories. The first is Nigerian scam about helping some poor, pathetic soul collect megabucks, supposedly from someone who has died and left a fortune. I’m not sure what is worse: that there are people desperate enough to believe those messages, or that there are people despicable enough to prey on desperate. The net result is despicable con desperate into sending money which desperate will never see again.

The second type comes from people who sound innocent enough. They have a product or a business or a service or something else that is perfectly legitimate. They surf web, find one of my sites, find “contact us” link, and send me information about whatever they have to offer. I suppose, in their minds, it isn’t any different than walking down street or going through telephone book writing down addresses, and then sending out bulk business mail with same offer. They could get same information for more money and less time by buying a mailing list. THAT is perfectly legitimate. Harvesting e-mail addresses off of web sites is NOT. Spam is officially defined as “unsolicited commercial electronic mail.” The key word is “unsolicited.” If I didn’t ask for it and you send it anyway, it is unsolicited. When people harvest e-mail addresses off of web sites and then send commercial messages, that, by definition, is spam. I report them to my ISP and you should, too.

The third type isn’t so innocent. These people, like second type of people already discussed, surf web, find sites, and harvest e-mail addresses from “contact us” link. Instead of starting out by sending you what they have to offer, they get devious, sneaky, and just plain under-handed. They send you a message asking for more information about whatever you have to offer on your site. When you graciously respond, it turns out they couldn’t care less about what you have to offer. The ONLY thing they want is to confirm your e-mail address so they can start to dump offers on you, hoping you will buy something from them. Nasty trick.

I vaguely remember a particular story from my childhood. It had something to do with transporting eggs to market. The main character, a little girl who thought she knew more than she really did, put all of day’s eggs into one basket, and when she tripped and fell on way into town to sell eggs, all of eggs broke. It seems that her grandmother (the voice of experience and wisdom) tried to tell her not to do that, but she wouldn’t listen. If she had divided them up into several means of transportation some would have been lost, but not all of them. It was a difficult lesson to learn.

Everyone is familiar with this concept by time we reach adulthood. It is most often brought up in field of financial investing. You know, don’t invest all of your nest egg in Acme Widgets, because who knows how long there will be a market for widgets. And then where will you be? Or maybe you are told not to invest all of your nest egg in stock market, but diversify into mutual funds or bonds or real estate or . . . Everybody from little girl in to above story to your mother to your neighbor to who knows who else eventually comes to see wisdom in that concept.

So how come it is that we see over and over that people put all of their internet eggs into one basket? They have one product or one program on one website that they optimize for one search engine (probably Google) and if any link in that chain breaks, they are dead in water. What could possibly go wrong? Glad you asked!