Email, what a great communications tool! However, it serves millions of unwanted spam messages every day, and it's quite tiresome at times to see the huge levels of utter trash that is sent. No longer is it just a pharmacy product message, or a 419, it's become a phishing, and malware delivery tool. Users have to be so careful to avoid getting caught out.
So, what alternatives are there. No, i'm not speaking of e-mail filtering systems, of which some are great. It occurred to me that social media could provide a solution. Think about it for one moment. A social media account could be operated as a closed system, so that any e-mail is exchanged within the social media system itself. This means that it would be so very easy to control spam. Everyone, would need to sign up to send e-mail to the closed system. Spam accounts could be shut down so much easier, and faster, and even automatically shut off as soon as the systems detect spam.
It would require something such as Facebook, Google or Microsoft to run this as it would have to have the resources to handle the massive numbers of users. The down side is that everything would be on its proprietary system, which is not so good from the point of privacy and security.
In principle, it could be done. I'm just surprised it hasn't been done, yet. Is the time right just now? Unless it already has been done.
Discuss!
