Spammers, Give The *%(#& Up Already

Seriously. I look in my spam folder of my gmail account and on my blog every few days, and it’s absolutely ridiculous just how much garbage ends up in it. Between the two I see about 100 or more combined comments/emails per day. It’s just insane. No, I don’t need viagra, or 100 different types of drugs, or some girl in YOURCITY to come over, or to come to your shitty seminar. Please give up already.

It’s not like any of these are intelligent either. I bet I could wire up a resistor, a few capacitors, a nine volt battery, and a piece of chicken that would catch 99% of them without any fancy algorithms. Do any of these honestly get through anymore? I guess on my old hotmail account I see the odd one make it through, but rarely does anything come close to getting through my blog or my gmail account.

Spam has been a problem for years, but I’m still surprised anyone does it in this capacity any more. My friend once gave a presentation on one way to eliminate it, and it involves charging everyone for every comment and email they send. Sounds weird at first glance, but what if every email was a fraction of a cent, and so was every comment. Maybe monthly you’d pile up a dollar or two in charges, but spammers would basically find it impossible to send any massive quantities of spam without incurring some type of charge.

Already on my cell phone I get about one random SMS message a week, sometimes more. It’s only going to get worse unless something is done, or spammers eventually give up. Even though going through my spam folders once every week or so doesn’t take a pile of time, it’s still a pain in the ass that I don’t think I should have to put up with.