Sorting the Inbox on a Holiday Day. Do We Really Need All Those Impersonal Cards?

Due to some urgent work I had to finish over the week, I have left my email inbox unattended for a few days - which normally results in a huge overload and a few hours to sort everything out as a result. This time is no different other than it is Christmas day today on the web (I mean the English-speaking portion of the world wide web here, of course) so there are some difference that I have noticed that I could not ignore and decided to share here.

First of all, my spam folder is full of holiday wishes - both from the real companies I know for some reason and from spammers. I wonder what makes Outlook sort all those congratulations as spam but it is definitely interesting to see cards from the sites I am active member of in the spam folder - even though everything else usually goes to other legitimate folders.

The most disturbing thing in my inbox today is that spammers somehow think that Christmas mood is a huge reason for people to forget that phishing exists - so they sent me a ton of various emails with “Merry Christmas” in the subject and nothing but a link inside. I have no idea where the links would have brought me but since I don’t really want to compromise my computer security, I have decided not to click the links - just in case. And even if these are legitimate greetings pages from some companies or websites I actually know but forgot, I do not want to check it anyway as the appeal of another impersonal holiday card is hardly enough to make me click a potentially phishing link.

Another problem that I have noticed this year is that I am definitely registered with too many websites that have a habit of sending too many cards. Not that I care about the number of startups or established web companies that can proudly count me as their user (joking, Ok?) or really want to go to all the places I have already forgotten about and figure out how to remove my unused accounts, but the mere number is definitely frightening as the rest of the year only a small portion of them send me some sorts of reminders. But there is also something good about it: it is refreshing to know that many of the startups I have signed up for have not collapsed in the first months or years of their existence - and are still strong enough to remember to send Christmas cards to their users.

But the major problem I see here is that overall the idea that every company with some online presence should send their best holiday wishes to all their customers or users is somewhat disturbing. Now I don’t print my emails out (and I guess the vast majority of people don’t these days - other than very specific corporate types with personal assistants processing their emails and providing them with printouts of the most important things) so I think we should not really care about all those trees that could have been killed because of those tons of virtual cards and gifts sent by email.

But how about electricity? Exactly how much power is needed to process all those extra volumes of emails that are sent in batches only to send some impersonal holiday wishes to everyone on your contact list or on your corporate mailing list? The servers and the bandwidth come at a price - and if we are talking about global warming and are aware of the environmental problems, we should not forget about it, right?

Of course it must be good for those sending the cards to remind the users of their existence and probably make some repeat sales again but in the vast majority of cases I will never click through their links and will only see the greetings if they are right in the email body. And holiday wishes should be considered carefully if you are planning them as a PR campaign because drawing attention to your campaign is not exactly doing something worthwhile on this Christmas day.

Take Google sending their card to all the AdSense publishers and AdWords advertisers on the planet - and informing us that as a gift to everyone they have contributed $20 million to charities (simple calculations show it is less than $1 million for each institution given their number). And how many Google partners received their cards? I don’t have exact numbers but my guess it is millions of people around the world - with immense server power and bandwidth consumed. And what for? To inform everyone that Google is so generous to give $20 million to charities (and probably cut some taxes on the road)? Sorry but I am not impressed for two reasons: the amount is not really impressive given that it is Google and charitable gift is only a gift when you keep it to yourself (no matter the amount) - and it quickly turns into a PR campaign if you inform everyone on Earth about your gift.

Now forget me this little rant, I certainly know that the power and time consumed by spammers every day is probably much higher than what the legitimate companies waste in the holiday season to remind their users they exist to send their sincere best wishes to everyone. But do we all just have to behave like spammers? And why not send your wishes only to the people you actually care about and want to wish something good for Christmas and the New Year?