Spam Kills Trees (or why we still get bills via snail mail)

About 6 months ago I made the leap, and started paying my bills online.

I love it. I probably save about 90 minutes each month now that I don't have to write checks and stuff envelopes for the roughly dozen or so companies I make payments to.

Still, I get envelopes from each of those companies sent via snail mail sent to me each month. The entire process seems incongruent; opening a hand-delivered letter, looking at a number, and then going online to make the payment.

At the end I often burn the actual bill sent to me. I don't want identity thieves sifting through my trash and finding anything useful.

While some companies offer paperless billing options, it's not widely adopted.

So why aren't more bills sent to customers via email? The answer is simple. Email is not as reliable a delivery mechanism as Bob the mail man is.

That a physical delivery process run by the government is more reliable than an electronic delivery system is shocking. What's the cause of this? Spam.

Would be spam solutions, running on a server, desktop computer or appliance intentionally delete a large portion of all messages received. The intent is to limit spam, and it certainly does. Unfortunately it also deletes a percentage of legit commercial email.

As email stands today, it can't be counted on to reliably deliver anything critical. If email had the same near 100% deliverability rate that certified mail does, we'd be well on our way to eliminating the postal service in the next few decades.

This is to say, spam kills trees, contributes to global warming and damages the economy in ways untold. Better spam filters for Outlook Express can't solve this problem. I'm not claiming any solutions, just saying the problem is more serious than many people realize.

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