Internet Innumeracy

Time reports this week that the "Can-Spam" act going through Congress this week would require individuals to opt-out with each individual company that wants to send them unsolicited e-mail. [Unsurprisingly, this measure has the support of the Direct Marketing Association, but that's beside the point at the moment.]

The problem is the number of e-mails that might be involved. In order to block every company in the country (23 million) from sending you unsolicited e-mail in a year (365 days), you wouldn't need to send about 600 messages a day; you'd need to send about 6000. Then again, considering the estimates are that five trillion pieces of spam will be sent out this year, that means every human on the planet would have to opt out of at least 800 times per year. That's a lot of clicks.

P.S. Is anybody else getting 3-4 messages a day in Korean?