Is there an unspoken prejudice on the world wide web?

[Harold Mansfield]

This is going to be a touchy subject, but one that I have discussed with friends privately, but have never seen anyone address it in a forum setting.

In the last 3 years, previously called 3rd world countries, developing nations have been having the same internet explosion that we in American had back in the 90's...and it seems that they are following the same path that we have already traveled.

We (The U.S) still lead the world in spam distribution by definition, however, emerging counties such as India, Pakistan, China, The Russian Federation, Brazil, and The Republic of Korea have just been littering the web with all kinds of garbage over the last 3 years.

Personally, most of the spam comments, spam emails and solicitations, splog registrations and even a few hacks to my sites that planted links in the sidebars..have mostly come from India, China, and Russia.

I will be the first to admit that when I see anything that looks like it's from India or Pakistan I don't even give it a second look and immediately set fire to it (delete, mark as spam, block the IP address, and so on).

It's not that I have anything personal against India or anyone from there , but on the web...the spam has just been unrelenting and it is just impossible for me to see any communication,website, or email from that area as credible anymore....let alone doing business with anyone from that area.

Before now, it was the Nigerian 419 scam emails that pretty much screwed anyone trying to do legitimate business online from the entire continent of Africa.

It's unfortunate that these countries are emerging internet power users yet a few are ruining the reputation and trust for entire areas of the world.

The internet was supposed to open up new markets and usher in an even playing field for everyone to do business internationally. But to me, what it has really done has alienate developing nations from the world even more because of the actions of a few...and it will always be that was as long as these nations allow spammers and unscrupulous people to operate within their borders without any fear of prosecution.

Sure, we spam here..but we can also go to jail for it. They don't.

Is it just me, or am I being unfair ?

[Spider]

...Is it just me, or am I being unfair ?Yes, you are being unfair - but so am I and a lot of other people. I don't mind, because a few years ago someone told me that the world isn't fair and nobody has promised me that it is.

In fact, that was written large for me by "Silver Spoons" - In that sitcom, they constantly reminded viewers that "The world isn't fair - but the more of it you own, the fairer it becomes!" (Or words to that effect.)

Spammers and hackers are here to stay and they will move to wherever the living is easiest for them. In time, probably, the offending nations will clean up their act - when their bigger problems have been dealt with. US spam is a lot less than it was in the early days - my worst day was 1,760 spam messages in 24 hours and I know many people had it much worse than that. Today, with a much bigger internet, it is a fraction of that.

The developing nations must live in the world as it is. I feel no obligation to make allowances for spam coming for their domains.

[vangogh]

First I'll say there's unspoken prejudice everywhere in life. It sucks, but it exists and probably will to some degree forever.

The same thing happens to me with spam, whether it's an email or someone signing up here. Usually it's from some Asian country, the three you mentioned most often. I don't automatically dismiss something from those countries, but it does weigh on my decision. With an email I'm judging it mainly on the content. It's usually easy to tell from the subject line alone or failing that the first couple of words in the body of the email.

In regards to people joining here or leaving comments, where they're from is one of the many signals I look at. There are some signals that alone clearly indicate the person in question is spamming. There are others that by themselves don't trigger a spam warning, but taken together they tip the scales.

I'm not planning on sharing all those signals, since I prefer not to let any spammer who happens to read this know, but given the topic I'll share this.

So far every person who's registered from Singapore has been a spammer. If I see someone from Singapore register it doesn't take much more to ban the account. Their location alone isn't enough, but even the smallest signal beyond the location is. That may not be fair to the person who is from Singapore, is legit, but sends some minor signal of spam. Unfair or not it's what it is.

In actuality where the person is from is one of the last things I check. I look at most of the other signals first and will use the location as the signal that tips the balance instead of letting the location frame my decision.

[KristineS]

I get a lot of unsolicited e-mails from thread companies, since our company sells embroidery supplies. A lot of them are from cut rate thread manufacturers in the Orient. Their thread might be good. It could be great. Doesn't matter. If I see that they're based in the Orient I'm deleting the e-mail without even reading it. That may be unfair, but the odds are overwhelming that the thread will be crap and I didn't ask for the e-mail, so it gets trashed.

Same thing with e-mails coming from certain foreign countries telling me they want to buy supplies from us. They may be legitimate, but all it takes is one misplaced comma or word that is spelled incorrectly and those e-mails are history. I've heard too many stories about scams to want to take the chance.

The reality is that you have to have something to base your judgments on. You can't take time to find out if every e-mail is legitimate, you'd never get anything else done. It may not be fair, but it is how most people handle it.

[billbenson]

I've done business with Singapore, Malaysia, Brazil, and others. Several of the orders were from $10k to $20k. So, for some of us, it makes sense to at least take a look at the email. All of my business is generated by my web site, so these are just online inquiries.

For the bulk of the inquiries I get from these country's, I trash them. To much paperwork etc on small orders. But small orders can lead to big orders.

There are others here that could possibly do business with that part of the world. Dan could do copywriting; the web designers could do web sites for foreign companies that want a US presence. I'm sure there are others. They may choose not to work in this market, but thats a different issue.

So the majority of the people here probably have no use for these emails. But some of us can make use of them if we choose.

This thread wasn't really about security in dealing with these countries, but obviously you need to take extra precautions.

[vangogh]

It absolutely depends on the specifics of the situation. I definitely wouldn't turn away someone from Asia simply because they're from Asia. It's simply that in my experience with this forum most of the registrations that originated in some Asian country turned out to be spam.

That doesn't mean the next person from India or Russia gets banned outright. It's rather that the country of origin will go into the determination of the intentions of that next person. And again I make sure to look at the country last. I don't want it to form my opinion even if I'm ok with it influencing my opinion.

[Harold Mansfield]

Speaking specifically about website spam, and splog registration on the MU sites that I have...the only recourse that I could come up with is just to block entire IP addresses..which could mean blocking a whole block of people in a certain area, but I really have no choice....it's like some kind of game.

Specifically splog registration. Even if I delete the blog and account immediately and add the keywords and email to the block list, they will come right back the next day and register again with another email address and post another splog. You could literally do this everyday and they will never stop doing it.It's a constant game of, "you make it, I delete it within minutes..I'll see ya tomorrow"...kind of like how The Road Runner and Coyote punched the time clock after a day of trying to kill each other, and picked it up again the next morning where they left off.

Now this I really don't get because none of my MU communities are free blogging anymore, mostly because of this. You get a free trial period and then you have to pay. They will still drop a splog for the trial period.

So I end up blocking a whole list of IP addresses just because of 5 or 6 people and it stops.

On the flip side, I don't really need traffic from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, or China so it's really no loss.

[nealrm]

I'm not really sure if it prejudice or just that the counties in question have fewer controls in place to stop fraud. If I receive an email from Japan I would be more likely to consider it than an email from China. Why, because the risk of fraud is lower. I know if there is a problem it is more likely that the authorities in Japan would work to resolve the issue than those in China.

[vangogh]

Harold that's sometimes exactly how it is here. I can ban 50 accounts that I can easily tell are the same person. Usually when it's coming from similar IPs I'll block a range of them. I don't want to block too much of a range though.

That's a good point Neal. I think the idea of it being prejudice is that the next email you get from China isn't automatically spam or a security risk. It originates as the security risk, but then it becomes a certain kind of prejudice against all email from China.

We're all prejudiced. I know that's a word you shouldn't throw around, but all it means is to prejudge. Here's a definition I found


A prejudice is a prejudgement: i.e. a preconceived belief, opinion, or judgment made without ascertaining the facts of a case

Don't we all do that at times?

We all know it's better to get the facts first before judging, but I don't know anyone who's never passed judgement based on a preconceived belief.

[Spider]

...Don't we all do that at times?
We all know it's better to get the facts first before judging, but I don't know anyone who's never passed judgement based on a preconceived belief.Interesting understatement. In fact, we all do it all the time. It's how the human being functions.

From assuming there's cornflakes in the packet just because it's still in the cupboard, to expecting that Brazilian woman on the phone to be tall and tanned and young and lovely because the only Brazilian women I've seen have been in videos of Rio Carnival!

We all prejudge something probably several hundred times a day.

[vangogh]

Yep. It's hard not to when you think about it. We're all confronted with hundreds if not thousands of decisions every day. For many of them we have no facts on which to base our decision, yet we still have to make a decision. We have no choice but to fall back on things like preconceived notions and opinion. They may not be the best information to base a decision on, but they seem better to us than flipping a coin.

[KristineS]

We also have to remember that we're being bombarded by much more information than we ever were before. There simply isn't time to make an informed decision about every piece of e-mail, every web page, every video etc.

Sometimes you have to rely on first impressions and make a quick decision so you don't get overwhelmed.

[vangogh]

That's true. The more information we're bombarded with the harder it is to find information that's true. We all end up filtering all the information we receive through all those preconceived beliefs we hold.

The word prejudice comes with some negative baggage. To me prejudging isn't the problem. It's the unwillingness to rejudge once the facts start coming in that's the problem or an unwillingness to find out the facts at all.

[Business Attorney]

The word prejudice comes with some negative baggage. To me prejudging isn't the problem. It's the unwillingness to rejudge once the facts start coming in that's the problem or an unwillingness to find out the facts at all.

You beat me to it. We prejudge all the time based on experience. That stove is going to be hot. Traffic is going to be heavy in rush hour. I'm not going to like a book by that author. And so on.

Sometimes prejudging is borderline. Police profiling. TSA profiling.

Sometimes prejudging is illegal - discriminating in employment based on race, religion or national origin.

By and large, I don't see what I consider "bad" prejudging when it comes to the internet. Someone like billbenson who sells in international markets may look for warning signals, but one person's dollar is as good as the next. If eborg's blog platform is geared to NY life, American politics or some other area where contributions from Russia, China or Singapore are almost certain to be spam, blocking certain IP addresses makes perfect sense.

On several forums, I see webmasters looking for "native English speaking writers." If they were looking for people to write code, that might seem bad, but if they are looking for readable articles, how much garbage from "fluent" English speakers who cannot pen a grammatically correct - or even sensible - sentence must they pore through before they say enough is enough?

We start from our experience and hopefully learn from it. Being open minded is one thing, rejecting all previous experience and starting from a perfectly clean slate is both impractical and illogical.

[vangogh]

I may have beat you too it, but you provided better examples than me.

Profiling crosses the line for me, because there is enough information to know better and it also brings in human rights issues. I understand though why some think profiling is an ok practice so maybe the borderline categorization is apt. Not for me personally, though.

I think the idea of prejudging is simply a biological defense mechanism. The last time we encountered a lion it ended very badly. Let's make sure to avoid the next one. Or that animal over there looks kind of like a lion. Best to kill it before it kills us.

Bringing it up to the present anytime you encounter something new you have no information to decide if it's going to be harmful to you. You relate the new as best you can to something you know and use that knowledge to make the determination.

For the most part it works pretty well. Most of the issues come from judging human beings that way and most of that comes from an unwillingness to form new opinions or find better information.

[billbenson]

Police profiling is the one that really pisses me off. For a large part, because they are so bad at it. My wife gets pulled over a couple of times a year for something she didn't do. Its bad enough that I'm thinking about putting a dash cam in her car. She has never been ticketed and the cop is always pissed when he runs her liscense and finds out its valid and she has never even had a ticket much less committed a crime.

In the news the other day, a 20 y/o Puerto Rican traveling with a valid Puerto Rico license was jailed for three days coming from Mexico to the US. He was allowed one call and his mother in New York was out of the house when he called. She was going crazy for several days as she was expecting him to call. It cost her several thousand dollars to get the necessary paperwork to fly her son here. Since he had a valid drivers license, this was easily avoidable as the drivers license was easily verifiable. Also, Puerto Ricans don't look like Mexicans. The customs agents involved didn't care.

Both of these situations show gross mistraining of police / INS officials. Most of the illegal immigrants come from rural farming areas in Mexico and Central America. Many can't read or write. In the area where I live, they look for work on farms, roofing etc. Their features are very different than those of the educated Latinos as they frequently from heavily Inca areas and have those features. I can tell an illegal here with about 90% accuracy.

The Police departments probably can't train their personnel as they can't say they profile. But they do profile.
</rant>

[KristineS]

This is a tough line to walk. In some cases, like Vangogh's line example, making a snap judgment is probably a good thing. A lion may purr and lick your cheek, but that could be because he's tasting you before he bites your head off, so avoidance is probably the best policy.

On the other hand, assuming everyone who is Hispanic or Latino is an illegal and a criminal is a bad snap judgment. It also doesn't really have an relevant use. Most Hispanic and Latino people, like most people of any race, are just trying to making a good life for themselves. Lumping them all in the bad actor category does everyone a disservice.

I guess there are a lot of shades of gray here, and our judgments will be colored by our experiences, our education, our family history and a lot of other things we're probably even not aware are impacting what we think.

[Harold Mansfield]

This obviously only manifests itself online. I don't practice this in the "real world".
In the "real world" my prejudice is against MLM's.

Seems to be a lot of people drinking the Kool Aide lately and their MLM is the best thing to happen since sliced bread, an different from all of the others.

I've never had so many people tell me that I am wasting my time and if I want to make some "real money" I should sign up with their crappy juice, or vitamin scam.
I really do believe that MLM people are a little nuts to believe in those types of programs with such conviction.

[Patrysha]

I joined one last year (an MLM)...I'm still not quite sure why I did that...

Cult-like and single minded...it freaked me out after a couple of weeks...

Not my cup of tea but I wish them well...

[billbenson]

There are MLM's that make some people a lot of money. Mind you some people, not all members. There are also MLM's like Avon that allow people to make a little extra money. Some of these people really need it.

Point being there are in existence MLM's that have value to some people and have good products. Most are garbage though.

[Spider]

...Point being there are in existence MLM's that have value to some people and have good products. Most are garbage though.Not having been exposed to anything like "most" mlms, I couldn't possibly agree or disagree. However, of those to which I have been exposed, most were sound legitimate businesses in which recruits could make a decent income, if they applied themselves.

[cbscreative]

It's interesting that a discussion on prejudice turns to MLM. Personally, I believe the idea behind MLM is sensible and sound. It is a viable business that's good for everyone involved. With that said, the problem stems either from the people distorting it with questionable ethics (or flat out dishonesty), or the recruiting being more important than the product.

MLM has certainly suffered a bad rep through a lot of self inflicted wounds. So while the business structure is sound IMO, human nature and our cultural expectations of how business and marketing should work has ruined it for the most part.

The grandaddy of MLM, the company that has almost single handedly built the city I live in (from a civic point of view as well as its business impact), Amway...is essentially dead in the US. Their domestic market, in spite of exceptional quality products at a fair price, is very weak. But in many areas of the world where that prejudice doesn't exist, Amway is thriving. That is really what keeps them in business.

When's the last time you were approached with Amway? For me, it's been years. I'd say close to 10 if not more.

[Harold Mansfield]

or the recruiting being more important than the product.


This has been my experience with hearing MLM pitches. All hype and average to outdated products.

Yes, a properly structured MLM can make some people money, but those people could probably make money anywhere.

I have respect for Avon, Amway, and Tupperware (Tupperware used to be an MLM and a very successful one) because they actually have a nice product, but most MLM's... Vitamins, Juice, Water Filtration, and so on..are usually average products with a lot of hype marketing about how much money you can make selling them, instead of how good the product is...usually narrated to thousands of people by the top 10&#37; of the whole organization that made all of their money off of the people that they are pouring the Kool aide to.

I guess there are just some things that make it into our mental "Scam" folder that no matter how hard we try, we will never be able to see objectively.

[billbenson]

The last MLM I went to a pitch on was for selling .ws domains. When I looked into it, the company business model relied on people dropping out, the downline email lists were then resold to new members. It was a system you could join and make money at only if you did not buy leads from them and use their system. It was in every sense a scam albeit probably legal.

As to Amway, I think they are still strong in the US, they just don't sell under the Amway name. They are definitely not a scam.

[Patrysha]

It's not that I see the MLM's as scams...perhaps a few are, but for the most part they are legitimate...if a bit unrealistic for some. I personally have found all the direct sale/network marketing realm to be filled with cult-like tendencies...meetings and conference calls and events and yada yada yada...come hang out with the cool kids and we'll show you how to succeed...buy our tapes, our books, our dvds, and on on.

It takes a certain personality to do well in that industry...and that's not a bad thing...just a different thing. I know some great people who sell vitamins, kitchen gadgets, candles, toys, lingerie and on and on. It's not that I couldn't do what they're doing...I just wouldn't enjoy it. Not my cup of tea...but there's lots of things I don't like and wouldn't be very good at that are perfectly good choices for other people.

[cbscreative]

Actually, bill, they changed back to the Amway name. I believe the name change was the result of inheritance laws as it changed hands to the kids, but whether those laws changed, I don't know. I only know they recently went back to the Amway name again. There is still Quixtar which is their online name, but that was Quixtar from its launch, years before the name change from Amway to Alticor (now Amway again).

Patrysha, I fully agree, those opportunities are ideal for some, and definitely not for everyone. They're not for me either. Unfortunately, many of the people in those programs think that everyone who doesn't join them is a loser. That attitude is not helping their reputations.