Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 20:41:53 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Clueless spammer
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

Despite my whitelisting, I continue to get more spam than legitimate
email.  So far, it's still a manageable amount.

Today I got a spam that said our site had been listed on an index of
sites about Norway.  It asked us for a reciprocal link.

The page of ours which they mentioned -- one of the online WSFA
Journals -- did indeed mention Norway.  The mention was in a list
of dozens of countries that our website has gotten hits from; part
of a report on our website that I wrote for the Journal.  Obviously
no human being at the spammer's site actually read it.  It's all
automated.  Mindless robots spewing gigabytes of mindless spew.

Each spam has about the same odds of being seen and acted on as an ad
tied to a brick and dropped in the middle of the ocean in hopes of
being seen by someone in a passing bathyscaphe.  But with enough
*trillions* of them, the numbers quickly add up.

I quickly blocked future spams on the same template, before I get
similar ones for each of the countries, states, towns, people,
products, foods, concepts, etc., that are mentioned anywhere on
our website.

It occurs to me that by now it's almost certainly true that the
majority of text ever written has consisted of spams.  As such, it's
curious how little formal academic study has been made of the topic.
Ph.D. candidates, take note.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.