Gimme an Ess, gimme a Pee...

SPAM.

SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM.

Any even random reader of my ramblings will know I do detest spammers. Most other people aren't very fond of them, either, probably not even their mothers. But I think most people think of SPAM as just annoying crap that delays your email deliveries and fills up your inbox without thinking too hard about the people who create the flood and make the money off this shit.

Some of them are not very nice people.

Take this guy for instance.

" Spam king and online drugstore operator Christopher William Smith, aka Rizler, 26, who is awaiting trial at the Sherburne County Jail, Elk River, Minn., used his phone privileges to arrange a hit on a witness and the witness's family."

Further down it says

"Smith, a high school dropout, was an internationally known e-mail spammer when he started the drug business. He was being pursued as Rizler, one of the country's top e-mail spammers who filled the inboxes of billions of e-mail accounts with offers for sexually explicit websites, penis enlargement drugs, 'generic Viagra' and online college degrees. In 2002, Time Warner Cable obtained an injunction barring Smith from selling cable television descrambler devices through e-mails, part of a spamming operation that helped earn him a reputation within anti-spamming circles."

And he looks so clean.

These people profit because using the internet doesn't require any special skills or knowledge and people simply do not understand that basic security measures are important, little things like not forwarding emails, reading email in text format, using a good firewall (that means one that monitors incoming and outgoing traffic) and a good, up-to-date anti-virus product. Not AVG and not bloody Nortons. Don't click opt-out links or reply to spam emails, don't submit your email unencrypted to a web page. Use a webmail account for public registrations and casual email contacts and never, ever, ever provide a login and password from via a link in an email for anything that involves finance.

And educate your friends and families because the buck stops with them, too.

When I was admin on the mail/web server, the biggest issue was the amount of spam crossing the server each day - 75% across all the domains at times. It was always a game of catch up as new tools and tricks were developed by the people who jam cyberspace with their effluent. So many types of spam, all treated a different way.

These guys are taking the fight to the spammer.



Ok, so they won't kill all spam or all at once, but it's a start. We should all make all make a start together.

PS Please, no more lottery prizewinning emails, I have nowhere to store all the money, and keep your hands off my viagra, I'm waiting for my penis to grow. They promised me it would.

[/soapbox]