Spam. It's the e-mail you don't want, but is sent to you anyway. In fact, Spam has been around since before the Internet and e-mail became mainstream. They even celebrated the 30th birthday of the first known Spam message last year.

I've been able to watch the evolution of Spam fighting techniques over the years, and while I understand the need for inbox protection from nefarious spammers, I'm fed up with the laziness of e-mail users. 

More and more I find myself being challenged to send someone an e-mail. I fire off an e-mail, and you send be back something automated that makes click through to a website and pass a Captcha (the box with a picture of letters, words or numbers that look scrambled where you have to recognize it and enter it into a box), fill out a form, or reply to some automated e-mail by sending you another e-mail.

The latter I find hilarious. I have to send two e-mails to get one through? Actually, what I really want to do is have my spam filter send a challenge to their spam filter to prove that it's a real spam filter before my spam filter lets me see their challenge.

Well, I've had it. No longer should we all be punished for trying to send someone a legit e-mail. I will no longer jump through hoops, and I will no longer be your personal junk mail filter. so enjoy this new tech law:

Matt's Tech Law #5 - NEVER use a friend, family member, relative, or other human being as a spam protection device. Always opt for a spam protection system that does not punish legitimate senders, or maintain an account for personal use that does not rely on this type of system. 

Matt's Tech Law #5, Section A: E-mail senders should ALWAYS ignore any automated e-mail challenge when sending a legitimate e-mail.

So the next time you get one of these automated challenge e-mails, join me by sending a different kind of message to these lazy folks and NEVER respond to it. If they ask why you didn't send them that e-mail they asked for, tell them you've got better things to do than be their junk mail filter and to check out Matt's Tech Law #5. Together we can create a world where everyone deals with their own spam.