« Blogiversary 1 | Main | Tuesday »

October 18, 2005

Notes from Ferdy - Another Spam Tragedy

by Ferdinand T Cat

I have on several occasions stated my belief that advertisers are as much victims of spammers as the EMAIL recipients. The basic business model is something like this:

  1. Naive new web user X sets up a web site.
  2. X sees an ad from Y about email advertising and buys their software and mailing list.
  3. X sends millions of EMAILs advertising his product.
  4. X's web site is shut down for spamming.
  5. Y keeps the money and finds a new victim.

Never has the story been more tragic than earlier today when Bruce received this mailing.

Hi! Me call Born! I from Nodsa. I invite on my site: http://www.best-airtools-store.info/. This site is devoted airtools. Here you can find the detailed information on any tool. If it is pleasant, at desire to get!

Needless to say, between the time the EMAIL left the server and the time Bruce read it, the best-airtools-store.info domain had been vaporized.

One solution to this problem would be to require warning labels on Spam Software, like we do with cigarettes:

THE SURGEON GENERAL HAS DETERMINED THAT USING THIS PRODUCT WILL RESULT IN TERMINATION OF YOUR WEB SITE. PREGNANT WOMEN ARE ESPECIALLY AT RISK.

There is, however, a better solution. Spam transcends national boundaries. The purpose of spam is to stimulate economic activity. You can see where I'm heading here: Require all spam to be produced by the United Nations.

I can't see a downside to this idea.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

Presented as an unsolicited trackback for advertising purposes at Bloggin' Outload, Jo's Cafe, Big Dog's Weblog, Mudville Gazette, Political Teen, Stop the ACLU, California Conservative, bRight and Early, Euphoric Reality, Outside the Beltway, Oblogatory Anecdotes, and the entire cast of Lethal Weapon 4.

# At Tue 11:16 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (0) | More Notes from Ferdy

Trackback Pings

Comments

HTML is not allowed in comments; however, if you put in a raw URL (http://www.somewhere.com/page.html) it will automatically be converted to a link.. Also, it is likely your comment will not appear unless you refresh the page manually after posting it.

Post a comment