You know, I'd have a lot more time for blogging if I didn't have to spend so much time deleting spam. It would be pretty awesome to set up a website dedicated to publicizing personal information about known spammers, such as their addresses, phone numbers, pictures, etc., along with similar information about their family members. If anyone wants to collaborate with me on such an endeavor, shoot me an email. Maybe "real life" social pressure can be brought to bear on the spam epidemic.
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The comment login system is acting strange. If you get an error message saying you aren't logged in when you are, just reload the comment page and try again. I'm trying to track this bug down, but it's not easy.
Spam persists.. in spite of the various technological measures and relative few legal ones.. because it is profitable. Spam works on the same principle that telephone marketing does; most of those contacted will say no, but maybe one or two will say yes. In the spam world, they take that paltry ratio and pump it up simply by the sheer volume of spam email sent. A ratio of, say, 1 in 10,000 looks pretty good when there are millions of spam emails sent. And with the costs associated with generating and sending spam being so cheap, the profitability is quite clear.
Spam will become less pervasive only when it becomes less profitable or unprofitable altogether.
I'd love to help with this endeavour, except most spammers are in places like Russia, where ISPs, email providers, web hosts, and domain registrars are not liable for their users' actions (or are liable, but the justice system is not effective enough for lawsuits to be worthwhile).
I completely empathize. Don't make the mistake I did. I got an account with Skype (free phone calls in the US and Canada for 2006). I made the HUGE mistake of listing my website in my profile. I never set it to "skype me" (publicising my existence) but they must have spammers constantly searching the Skype network for websites and blogs to spam.
Anyway, the night I signed up, they got me good. I woke up the next day to see that my site had 60 spam posts on it. (I had not gotten spam comments up to that point)
Now I'm "on the radar". :(
Maybe the US needs to withdraw from Iraq and topple the SPAMing regime in Russia!