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“If the bank loans you a million dollars, the bank has a problem. If the bank loans you a billion dollars, the US government has a problem.”
— Mark Steyn, September 17, 2008

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— Perri Nelson, September 17, 2008

Yet another reason I hate SPAM

Published Fri, Jul 13 2007 9:52 AM
Technorati Tags: Annoyances

Have I mentioned before that I hate SPAM?

I've come to accept SPAM as a fact of life. It's going to be there. In a world where people are infected with the love of money there will always be some that will do anything to get it.

Since the dawn of postal services there has probably been a problem with unsolicited commercial mail. Well, maybe not quite that far back, but you get the point. I can remember over 25 years ago reading the "MAKE MONEY FAST" postings on UseNet, and who hasn't received a chain letter?

Bloggers that receive any traffic at all have to defend against SPAM. Even bloggers that don't receive any traffic and haven't posted anything on their blogs in three or four years have their blogs polluted with SPAM links.

We get links to pornography, including some really sick and disturbing stuff. We get links to drug sites. We get links to auto insurance dealers. We get real estate links. We get penny stock links. We get gibberish.

More than 85% of my bandwidth is consumed by SPAM.

Have I mentioned that I hate SPAM?

Well, I know that I'm not alone. SPAM filters have been popular for e-mail programs for a long time. You can buy SPAM firewalls. Bad Behavior, Spam Karma, and AKismet are available for bloggers to block SPAM, yet the junk still gets through.

SPAMMERs are pretty near the scum of the Earth as far as I'm concerned. Even with laws in place that make SPAM communications criminal they still keep spewing their trash into our communications. Nobody seems to be safe from them.

Many companies have policies that make viewing pornographic or obscene material in the workplace a firing offense. Now it looks like even blocking SPAM them can get you into trouble.

Spam filter costs lawyers their day in court

Last May, the Aurora, Colo., law firm was being bombarded with offensive messages, and enough of it was seeping through the company's spam filters that employees complained to management. IT administrator Kevin Rea was told to do something.
What happened next, as detailed in federal court filings, shows how the fight against spammers can backfire. Spammers have been using increasingly sophisticated techniques to evade filters, so that over the past few years and despite predictions to the contrary, unsolicited e-mail continues to plague businesses worldwide.
On the morning of May 21, Rea dialed up the spam settings on the Barracuda Spam Firewall 200 used by Azar & Associates to block unwanted mail. The changes made it harder for spam to land on the desktops of company employees, but they also had one unforeseen consequence: The Barracuda Networks appliance began blocking e-mail from the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, including a notice advising company lawyers of a May 30 hearing in a civil lawsuit.
Azar & Associates lawyers blew their court date, and this week, the judge overseeing the matter ordered the company to pay attorney fees and expenses incurred by the lawyers who showed up representing the other side of the case. Rea did not return a call seeking comment on the matter.
…
… "It doesn't take a very high percentage of false positives in the anti-spam world to misidentify a crucial piece of correspondence."

Have I mentioned before that I hate SPAM?

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