Looks like an interesting and quite possibly funny documentary. It’s about time someone made a doc on this.

While investigating this intrusive marketing machine, Manning also responds to offers for penis enlargement, the purchase of a genuine Rolex watch and a quick weight reduction method promising lost inches in just 60 minutes.

Spam the Documentary airs Tuesday October 17 and Saturday October 21 at 10pm ET/PT on CBC Newsworld. Click here to read a full synopsis at CBC.ca.

Ever wondered how many emails are sent each day? Well, we got out our abacus and started counting. Turns out, over 171 billion – yes, billion – emails are sent daily. That breaks down to 2 million email messages every second. The bad news? Around 70% is considered spam.

Source: About.com Email

Dear Aunt May,

- Shopping Diva, Vancouver, BC

Dear Diva,

Well sweetie, I guess that all depends on the sorts of shops you frequent! Just like the apples at the green grocer, there’s both good and bad in the bunch and it’s up to you to pick out the sweet from the rotten. So how do you do that?

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Today there are no minimum data security standards that a company must meet to market themselves as an email service provider. Any independent freelancer with rudimentary coding skills can buy a computer, download an open source list management tool, set up a bulk email server and open an email marketing service.

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We’ve been sending our email newsletter to our customers using our in-house exchange server and a bulk email management tool we purchased online for a few hundred dollars. It’s been working great up until a few days ago. Suddenly we’re having problems getting our email delivered. Even personal email from our sales reps isn’t getting through. Have you any idea what could be going wrong?

Stonewalled, New York, NY

A: Dear Stonewalled,

Honey, blacklists aren’t just for dinner guests that can’t hold their liquor – it sounds like one of your customers has reported your server as being drunk and disorderly to their ISP! A blacklist is a list of IPs that have been reported as sending spam. ISPs won’t deliver messages from spammer IPs, which explains why none of your messages are getting through – while your customers are inside enjoying cocktails, the doorman is holding you back at the entrance!

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