Dear spammers...

[matgb]

Look, I know you've had a quiet week for the most part, but I think it's time to explain a few home truths.

1. I do not have a PayPal account
2. I do not have an eBay account
3. I have no real interest in OEM software
4. I have never bought a ticket in the Netherlands lottery
5. If I want to look at porn, I will go and look at porn you don't need to mail me with links to your crappy redirect sites
6. What is Cialis anyway. And, for that matter, can you please learn to spell Viagra?
7. Those 419 advance fee fraud things you keep sending me? Only work on people with money in their bank account, I don't
8. I have a decent spam filter anyway...

That last is the clincher here, right? Spam still exists because people are stupid enough to click on the links and buy the product a very small number of times. There's normally a post on, for example, livejournal_uk every week from someone asking if the email they've received from PayPal is genuine. Yet, for the most part, the only real problem spam causes me is checking my spam folder for false positives every so often and then emptying it. I last did it Wednesday evening. Last night, it had about 200 messages in it. Today? 647. Ouch.

But, the good bit? Of those 400+ new spams since midnight last night? Not a single one got into my inbox. Not a single false positive either. Rarely get anything in my work inbox either, but the false positives there can be a bit annoying at times, but at least the whitelist works. Now, ok, not everyone has effective spam filtering, and sometimes those that do don't a) realise it's there or b) check it for false positives properly, which can mean genuine legitimate email can get lost. But for the most part, the era of annoying spam is ending. It's just a part of life that we deal with.

For those either using, or thinking of using, a Wordpress.org install, then Bad Behaviour is a definite must. 2369 in the last 7 days. Akismet hasn't had to do anything more after that.

So, dear friends. If you would be so kind as to target your advertising bollocks more effectively, and stop sending me stuff that's completely irrelevent, I would very much appreciate it. I'm already signed up for a few sites created by former colleagues of yours that exist specifically to spam me stuff, you could learn from them and realise the game is up? Thanks chaps, much appreciated.

Comments

[dedbutdrmng.livejournal.com]

I agree. (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=107002043&blogID=183037150&Mytoken=97A01027-8E71-4798-9214818D8C4472526099453)