According to the Washington Post spam caused more economic damage than hackers and viruses last month. I can easily believe it, spam is a constant problem and it could easily be the death of email. People who think that it’s just a matter of using the delete key need to be shown what spam does to mail servers. Tragedy of the commons… (via IP)
An interesting aside: I was at a going away dinner for a friend and two guys I didn’t know an I got to talking. They told me that they sent out bulk email and I said “so you’re spammers?” and they said they were. My first inclination was to violently beat them but I didn’t know what that would accomplish aside from showing an insignificant portion of spammers how the world feels about them.
I asked “so you get paid to send my younger brother and sister porn pictures?” One of them said that they didn’t send porn anymore, and suggested that organized crime was responsible for a lot of that. So what could I have done in that situation? I don’t see how I could show someone the damage that spam does in a way they haven’t already rationalized as ignorable.
2 responses to “Spam vs. Hackers”
I’m sure you could have said something witty, but I probably just would have taken my plate of food and dumped it on them, along with my partners, and any one else willing @ the table.
“I’m sorry, you didn’t want the pasta primavera in your hair? We thought we were performing a service by allowing you to sample all of the dishes @ once, without your permission.”
Unspeakable rude, yes, but I place Spammers rate just above Nazis and Pederasts in my book. This mostly due to the fact that my mail program chugs along as it filters through 194 spam supsects this week, and 800+ certain spam messages.
great stuff!