Charles Stross' Diary (RSS Feed)
02-06-2008, 07:04 PM
I'm seriously considering pitching a detective novel, about the hunt for a serial killer. The unique selling point will be that as the detective homes in on the killer, he gradually comes to sympathize with him, and ends up questioning whether he should actually collar the murderer ... because the victims are all spammers.
It's been a particularly bad month, here: the daily spam load on my mail server hasn't dipped below 30,000, and the amount of bandwidth they're chewing up with their ads for v1agra and solicitations from the desk of Kofi Annan has grown to be roughly the equivalent of a 28.8K modem running 24x7. I finally bitten the bullet and started paying for a commercial spam filtering service (mail-scanning.com (http://www.mail-scanning.com/)) rather than trying to nurse a balky installation of SpamAssassin along after I worked out that the cost of my time exceeded the cost of the service (and it's a business expense anyway). But I am seriously narked insofar as the spammers are costing me real money, and while as a matter of principle I am opposed to capital and corporal punishment, I'd have a lot of sympathy for that fictional unhinged serial killer.
Finally, lest you think that spamming is irritating but harmless, I'd like to draw your attention to the contents of your spam bin. You'll notice that about 40-50% of it consists of attempts to sell you cheap medicines (and a chunk of the rest is a blatant attempt to steal your bank account and identity details). It turns out that about half the pills sold by spammers are counterfeit (http://www.spamdailynews.com/publish/Why_Viagra_spam_floods_your_mailbox.asp). And while this isn't going to kill you as long as all you're trying to do is rev up your sex life, it's tantamount to murder if the stuff that's being flogged is sold as a cheap substitute for otherwise-expensive prescription antiviral, antibiotic, or antihypertensive medicines.
(Original Post) (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2008/02/spam_1.html)
It's been a particularly bad month, here: the daily spam load on my mail server hasn't dipped below 30,000, and the amount of bandwidth they're chewing up with their ads for v1agra and solicitations from the desk of Kofi Annan has grown to be roughly the equivalent of a 28.8K modem running 24x7. I finally bitten the bullet and started paying for a commercial spam filtering service (mail-scanning.com (http://www.mail-scanning.com/)) rather than trying to nurse a balky installation of SpamAssassin along after I worked out that the cost of my time exceeded the cost of the service (and it's a business expense anyway). But I am seriously narked insofar as the spammers are costing me real money, and while as a matter of principle I am opposed to capital and corporal punishment, I'd have a lot of sympathy for that fictional unhinged serial killer.
Finally, lest you think that spamming is irritating but harmless, I'd like to draw your attention to the contents of your spam bin. You'll notice that about 40-50% of it consists of attempts to sell you cheap medicines (and a chunk of the rest is a blatant attempt to steal your bank account and identity details). It turns out that about half the pills sold by spammers are counterfeit (http://www.spamdailynews.com/publish/Why_Viagra_spam_floods_your_mailbox.asp). And while this isn't going to kill you as long as all you're trying to do is rev up your sex life, it's tantamount to murder if the stuff that's being flogged is sold as a cheap substitute for otherwise-expensive prescription antiviral, antibiotic, or antihypertensive medicines.
(Original Post) (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2008/02/spam_1.html)