Why is information garbage annoying?

Today, while sharing the high efficiency brought by informatization, people are also suffering from the increasingly serious impact and trouble of information garbage flooding.

The development of information technology, on the one hand, constantly changes people's lifestyle, but on the other hand, it also increases people's high dependence on it. When people feel its negative influence and try to get rid of it, they find that information has become an indispensable part of people's lives. Domestic garbage has side effects on people's survival, so we must deal with them. Information garbage is not good for people either. The simplest point is that you should spend time and energy to pick out the junk letters and then delete them. More complicated, some deliberately created garbage may cost you a lot of time and money, which is a loss of efficiency for both individuals and society. For example, so-and-so received an email saying that he won a grand prize of 5,000 yuan and asked him to visit a link to confirm. He visited the link and only saw an advertisement, which turned out to be a scam. The sender sends the advertisement link he applied for to others, falsely claiming that he needs the confirmation of the other party to win the prize, so as to increase the number of visits and earn income-it is really bitter for the deceived person, so he has to pay more online. As for some pornographic pictures and texts, it is even more spiritual pollution and harms people's mental health, especially teenagers.

Information junk is not only in mail, but also almost everywhere in the information society. Computer typesetting technology has greatly developed the publishing industry, so all kinds of text rubbish have blossomed everywhere: just now, it was said that paperless office saves paper, and immediately newspapers and magazines kept expanding their pages, and more rubbish emerged out of thin air; A piece of news is often broadcast on TV after logging on the Internet, published in newspapers and periodicals on TV, and reprinted in newspapers and periodicals on the Internet. We advocate that people should have environmental awareness and not litter. In fact, we should also have a sense of "environmental protection" on the information carrier and consciously maintain the cleanliness of the media. For example, on the Internet, consciously abide by network public morality. In fact, people really need environmental protection websites-it's a pity that many websites turn into mountains of garbage as soon as they enter, as if they were in a big garbage dump. Have you ever wondered why we live more tired than in the past? That's because we are facing more information pollution than in the past-since entering the network information age, the amount of information garbage produced by each of us is enough to exceed the sum of the amount of words produced by all scholars in the past. Why is information junk prevalent? One of the main reasons is the low cost of manufacturing information.

In addition to the spam that makes Bill Gates feel headache, the similarity of websites, harassing short messages and hard-to-prevent instant messages have become the main body of information junk in modern society. Information garbage is as pervasive and ubiquitous as domestic garbage, and no one can avoid its pollution. Domestic garbage seriously harms human health, while information garbage consumes a lot of human time and energy. Four types of information garbage:

Mail spam

As a very low-cost tool, e-mail has spread rapidly in a short time, and now many people have their own e-mails printed on their business cards. Mailbox. However, when I open my mailbox every day, I find that it is full of spam such as "easy money", "free adult pictures", "online adult products monopoly" and "Congratulations on winning the lottery".

What's even more hateful is that these junk mails are full of pornography and advertisements, and some of them also contain viruses and trojans, waiting for opportunities to destroy your computer system; Others will automatically open a browser window and take you to a meaningless website. When you delete these junk mails in a rage, the really important mails are likely to be deleted by mistake.

At present, spam has almost become a global disaster. According to the report of the International Telecommunication Union, 80% of the e-mails in the world are spam, which causes about $25 billion in losses to computer users every year. Every day, more than10 billion pieces of junk mail spread to every corner of the world regardless of national boundaries, piling up in people's e-mails, causing panic to the owners of e-mail boxes and bringing a heavy burden to the Internet. Today, as long as you turn on the computer, you have to face the emails that come to you. Not only do you have to spend a lot of time to screen and identify the truly valuable emails buried in information junk, but you also have to be on guard against the attacks of hacker email viruses at all times. But often you are busy for a long time and don't find anything really valuable, which not only consumes a lot of energy, but also wastes the most precious time. Many people have had this experience, sometimes they really want to ignore those annoying emails, but they are worried that if they miss the really valuable information. In desperation, we can only passively spin in the whirlpool of information.

Website spam

The website information redundancy is very large, and the content duplication is serious. The same information is often copied from one website to another. No matter what kind of search engine you use, you can usually find thousands of related items by searching a piece of information casually. However, if you click one by one, you will find that there are only a few or dozens of useful websites, and the rest of the websites either provide repeated information or have no actual content at all.

But we can't know which websites provide useful information and which websites provide useless information, so we have to waste a lot of time browsing junk websites, and the purpose of browsing is only to eliminate them. Search engine is an important tool to help people find information from the vast Internet, but how to play its due role when dozens of pages of search results are frequently listed and wrong links and invalid links are frequent?

Search engines should get out of the misunderstanding of one-sided pursuit of as much information as possible, do a good job in website retrieval and verification, provide smarter search conditions, and help users retrieve valuable information faster and better.

spam text

In 2002, the number of SMS messages sent in China exceeded 56 billion. According to the prediction of relevant experts, the number of SMS messages sent in China will exceed 654.38+05 billion in 2003. How much of it is spam? I'm afraid no one can give a specific number, but what is certain is that this number is definitely not small, because mobile phone users are often harassed by spam messages.

Spam messages not only waste time, but also "rob" money. When many mobile phone users get the bill, they often find that there are several unrecorded expenses. On the internet, there are traps everywhere, and users will open a paid SMS service if they are not careful. If you ignore this spam message after receiving a few cents to a few dollars, it is equivalent to accepting the other party's business by default, and this fee will continue to appear in the future.

Instant message spam

Friends who like QQ chat often have this experience. When chatting with netizens in full swing, advertisements sent by Tencent always interrupt your conversation without interest.

Users using NT/WIN2000/XP operating system must have been harassed by "messenger service" when surfing the Internet. This kind of information prompt, similar to webcasting, mostly induces readers to browse a website (mostly pornographic) or buy a product. According to statistics, a friend of the author received 35 reminders of "messenger service" on his computer at most one day (calculated as 8 hours online) (note: under the management tools in the control panel, you can refuse to receive such messages by turning off the "messenger" in the service).

One of the characteristics of instant message spam is that it must be checked, otherwise it will be prompted until you close it. According to Business Weekly, instant messaging has become the new favorite of spammers.

Causes of information garbage

"The world is bustling, all for profit; The world is bustling, all for profit. " The root of information garbage is that it can bring huge economic benefits. An email costs only a few cents, a short message does not exceed a dime, and sending instant messages costs almost nothing. Using these methods effectively can not only make money, but also make a lot of money, which has the special effect of "low input and high income". As for websites that only need to invest a few hundred dollars a year, many people are flocking to them. Although the internet bubble has burst, making money from websites has become the knowledge of all website operators.

Some information rubbish is also created by some people based on the mentality of recreation, entertainment, boredom or mischief. Some people have special hobbies, so they set up a website to entertain themselves. Someone read a funny short message and an interesting article and sent it to friends to share. Some people send false information and yellow information to harass others in order to satisfy their psychopathy.

The harm of information garbage

The book "Network Problem Report" points out that employees in enterprises spend an average of 1 hour per day reading e-mail, of which 34% are all kinds of repetitive information, jokes, advertisements and other useless content, which takes up a lot of time and seriously affects work efficiency.

According to Netease, spam has five main hazards: (1) takes up network bandwidth, causing mail server congestion and reducing the operation efficiency of the whole network. (2) Invade the privacy of the recipient, occupy the mailbox space of the recipient, and consume the recipient's time, energy and money. (3) Being used by hackers as a tool to help others. (4) Seriously affect the service image of ISP. Internationally, a host that frequently forwards spam will be listed in the international spam database by an Internet service provider at a higher level, which makes it impossible for the host to access many foreign networks. (5) misleading people, swindling money and color, and spreading pornographic content.

Spam websites are often frequent visitors to search engines. Although they won't take the initiative to harm you like spam, when you open their address with expectation, you will find that there is nothing to recommend except a lot of colorful advertisements and some outdated and repetitive information, and of course you will be angry. CNNICNo. 1 1 Statistical Report on Internet Development in China shows that as of June 65438+February 3 1 2002, the number of websites in China has reached 37 1 10,000. The number of global websites exceeded 40 million as early as the beginning of 2002, and it is still expanding at a high speed. Among them, junk websites account for a large part.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Italian economist Valledo invented the "28 Law", which holds that the most important thing in any kind of thing only accounts for a small part, about 20%. Although the remaining 80% is the majority, it is secondary or even useless. This rule also applies to websites, which means that 80% of the websites we visit are rubbish, and I believe senior netizens will agree with this.

As for SMS spam and instant message spam (strictly speaking, SMS is also instant message), people hate it even more, because the receiver is not only in an absolute passive position, but also has to respond immediately. Due to technical reasons, it is very difficult to filter these two kinds of spam at present, which brings the biggest trouble. As you can imagine, when your mobile phone and computer constantly "prompt" you to participate in an activity and buy a product, it is difficult for someone not to be annoyed, but there is nothing they can do, because you can't contact your friends when you turn off your mobile phone and you can't work when you turn off your computer.

Methods of controlling information garbage

There is no denying that informatization has a dual nature. On the one hand, it gives us important information, but at the same time it also brings us the trouble of junk information. So, how can people make effective use of information technology and get rid of the nightmare of information garbage?

At present, Microsoft takes more technical measures to help people get rid of the information burden. Although Microsoft's office software, a comprehensive tool integrating writing, computing, speaking and communication, has not only reduced people's labor intensity, but also effectively improved work efficiency, and has become the main desktop application for 400 million users around the world. However, the subsequent information burden is becoming more and more serious, and sometimes it even reaches an unbearable level. Not long ago, Bill Gates said that Microsoft would come up with better collaboration software and other tools from the technical level. For example, Microsoft's newly developed integrated communication application began to try some new functions. This software will judge whether to disturb you according to what you are doing, who is looking for you, how urgent the message they want to convey to you, and so on, thus helping people get rid of the interference and burden brought by the heavy email and mobile phone information. However, there is still a long way to go to realize the real integration of e-mail, telephone, mobile communication and instant messaging. Nevertheless, people are convinced that with the progress and development of new technology, those valuable information will be used to the maximum extent by human beings, and those junk information that puzzles people will eventually be controlled, filtered or even completely eliminated.

In addition to technical means, many countries have also formulated corresponding laws and regulations, trying to use legal means to combat the proliferation of junk information, standardize advertisements in various media, and eliminate the interference and influence of junk information on people's normal lives. The United States, Japan, Canada, Spain, Australia and other countries have enacted or are in the process of enacting their own anti-spam laws. In 2003, Australia took the lead in promulgating anti-spam law in the world. Since April 2004, any company or individual who sends emails from Australia will be severely punished by law once caught. Prior to this, some states in the United States and the European Union also enacted similar laws, but none of them were enacted in the name of one country. In the name of the country, Australia has raised anti-spam to the legislative level and used legal weapons to strengthen the crackdown and sanctions, which is undoubtedly ahead of the world, so it has attracted the attention of governments all over the world.

With the proliferation of spam, more and more countries are beginning to realize the necessity and urgency of making corresponding laws, and further accelerate the legislative process, with a view to regulating the current situation of spam in their own countries through legal means, which is also an effective means to help people get rid of the nightmare of spam.