For the past few months I’ve received occasional recorded calls on my mobile telephone. A sort of spam, you could say, but to my mind worse, because it interrupts you. At least e-mail spam accumulates silently until you open your e-mail.

I started to wonder about the economics of such a system. Like spam, the response rate is probably fairly low. Unlike spam, the cost of transmission is not nearly free.

Then a few weeks ago Skype announced free Skype-out calling (in the U.S.) for the rest of this year. That means that from a PC you can call any phone number without variable cost. Combine low cost and a communication medium and what tends to be the result? Spam, spam, and more spam. If spammers do morph in this direction, it’ll be interesting to see what ensues. What would public reaction be? What countermeasures might Skype put in place? Or would they discontinue free Skype-out?

We’ve been in the thick of the battle against e-mail spam, and with our human-generated spam filters that are updated constantly, we’re eliminating most of it. But once an economic ecosystem exists, it’s hard to eliminate it. E-mail spam persists because not everyone uses effective, up to date filters. As more people do use anti-spam tools like ours, though, the battle may not be over.

Gotta go. My phone is ringing.

Posted by Roger Greene
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