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November 7, 2005

Why Spammers Suck

Aubrey notes that the FBI has arrested and charged a young man with spamming, and if found guilty his life could get quite miserable indeed. (Good, says I.) Aubrey then goes on a little rant, which I will reproduce in part:

I’ve heard it said by spam apologists that it’s nothing personal that they attack your website. To them, it’s all business. Your PC is simply a commodity, to be infected with a bot and traded amongst spammers. Your website is another commodity to be used to gain hits for their clients. And it would appear that despite our best efforts, there is still money to be made

I've never understood the idea of defending spammers, particularly the kind of spammers who are not sending emails, but are using other people's computers to attack third parties or send spam emails, or are posting spams on blogs and other websites in order drive up a third party's rankings in search engines.

If someone were to break into my house, and store illegal or illicit goods in an unused part of my attic, and tell others how to break into my house to get the illegal goods, that would be wrong even though it is utilizing resources (attic space) that I was not myself using.

If someone were to break into my house, and use my phone to make telemarketing calls to others, that would be wrong even though it isn't costing me anything extra unless they call internationally.

If someone were to paint advertising slogans on my garage door without my permission, that would be wrong even though it does not detract from the utility of my garage.

And virtually everyone sees such actions and considers them wrong without any explanation. Yet some still defend people setting up peer-to-peer servers on hacked-into computers, using hacked-into computers to send email spam, and posting spam comments and trackbacks on blogs. Yet the cases are directly analogous. These kinds of computer attacks and misuses are nothing more than lowlife scum attempting to make me pay for things they want, or to direct possible legal retaliation at me rather than them. While I'm not sure that I would necessarily sanction the use of small caliber weapons at body extremities, I'm pretty sure I'd go for expulsion and exile following very public humiliation and the seizing of all the spammers' property, with the profits from auctioning it off going to the people the spammer inconvenienced.

Posted by jeff at November 7, 2005 2:03 PM

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Comments

Posted by: Aubrey Turner at November 7, 2005 2:46 PM

Posted by: mark safranski at November 7, 2005 5:41 PM

Posted by: Brian Medcalf at November 8, 2005 12:04 AM