Brad Templeton: Origin of the term “spam” to mean net abuse. Much to the chagrin of Hormel Foods, maker of the canned “Shoulder Pork and hAM” luncheon meat, the term “spam” has today come to mean network abuse, particularly junk E-mail and massive junk postings to USENET.
I’ve noticed a dramatic increase in spam this fall. I delete at least one of every two messages before even bothering to open them. It takes an extra half-second to do this, but no e-mail at all seems to be the only alternative.
The spammers are loathesome. They prey on stupidity and greed.
I have a simple policy that would stop these jerks in their tracks if everyone followed it. I never, ever buy anything that is advertised by e-mail, unless I have specifically placed myself on a company’s mail list. Period.
But the cost of spamming is so low, and enough spamees are so stupid, that the practice continues. Why do people fall for this crap?
The other way to slow this avalanche is to give ISPs better legal tools to prosecute the spammers who consume bandwidth and disk space without any regard for the community at large. The law is not nearly sufficient in this regard.
I still get occasional unsolicited faxes from jerks who abuse the federal law against such things, but I don’t get many. It’s long overdue to enact a similar law on spam.
No, the law can’t stop this infection. But it can slow the spammers down. That’s all I’d like to see.
Meanwhile, I’m building up a callous on the finger that hovers over the Delete key on my computer. Fittingly, this is my middle finger.