I’m sure that other blog writers go through this same thing almost everyday, deleting the almost constant flow of “spam” or spammy comments.
Back on May 23rd I posted an article about Dateline MSNBC’s program on identity theft. I’ve received almost daily comments on this article that are nothing but pure gobbledegook spam and make no sense at all. It just makes the whole daily process of working on the Internet a real chore, rather than a pleasure.
There are only two ways that we will ever really destroy spam. The first and most important is that all of us as users of the Internet simply refuse to buy anything that comes to us via an unrequested email. The other is for the United States government and those of the European Union to get serious about this assault on all of us by the criminal elements that are financing and running the spamming operations.
If you don’t know what “spam” is by now, then you’re either an idiot or have been locked in the closet for the past ten years. To borrow a phrase from the GEICO Insurance commercials – “Even a caveman knows what spam is.”
Spam basically boils down to somebody trying to (1) sell you something of questionable quality from some unnamed country that you’d be afraid to travel to on your own, (2) pique your interest in some new penny stock or worthless investment scheme, or (3) to get you to open a meaningless message that might contain some destructive computer virus or spyware so that they can either (A) turn your computer into a zombie to forward their spam, or (B) damage your computer or its software programs because they think it is “fun” for them to be able to do it.
I have about a dozen different email accounts that I use to make legitimate inquiries on the web – inquiries that I initiate. Within days, most of those accounts were flooded with new spam messages that I have no interest in at all. No matter what I do, the spam continues to flow in unabated. I don’t want these email messages:
I don’t need a “bigger penis” because mine is huge already (for a white guy).
I don’t need Viagra made in Asia or Africa, cause I don’t NEED Viagra (at least that’s my story).
I don’t care about the penny stock that is “sure to go up 500% in the next 5 days” because I’ve already lost all my money in the stock market (I only invest in “sure things” like the Lotto).
I don’t want to be employed by a mysterious British company that has to remain anonymous, but needs hundreds of workers in the USA that can invest a few hundred dollars for the privilege of getting a job (well maybe I would if the job has good medical insurance).
The spam messages that confuse me the most are the ones that sound like code generated by some encryption machine. If they are actually coded messages, what do they think I am going to do? Decipher it, read it, and then go out a commit some unspeakable crime while calling upon the name of Mo, JC, or Adolf? Why would I do that? Why would anyone do that?
If the US government is really tracking all of our email messages looking for terrorist messages, how about the trackers identifying the sources for all the spam that is passing through their filtering computers. If small companies or individuals are making money off of spam, shut them down and arrest them. If big companies are involved (and this is a huge probability), expose them and either shut them down and fine the bejesus out of them. I think the American public would show outrage and actually boycott the products of any big corporations that were financing and benefitting from spam if we knew who they were.
I think that truth may lie in that last sentence. The reason that the USA and EU have not chosen to shut these spamming devils down is that some influential Fortune 500 companies are actually financing and using spam as cheap advertising. Ever notice how many spams you get for mortgages? It is so bad now that even legitimate emails that mention home loans or mortgages can’t get through because they are eaten by spam filters. If a homeowner has a legitimate inquiry to an online lender, they may never see the answers. Yahoo! or Hotmail’s junk mail filter or the spam detector on their own ISP’s server will kill the messages off first. Yet hundreds of unrequested spam messages about mortgages still make it past the filters and clog up everyone’s Outlook files.
There is so much going on behind the scenes that keeps these devils of the Internet doing their dirty deeds. Almost every response I receive for articles written on this site and others is a spam message that I have to kill off. If I allowed unrestricted and unmoderated comments to this blog, it would soon fill up and become hundreds of pages long with nothing but one and two line spam messages.
Goddamned Spam!!!
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