The Joys (not) of Spam

I’ve had my same primary e-mail address through Yahoo for almost 10 years now – In fact, I’m one of the first people to have a @yahoo.com e-mail address, I think. It’s worked well over the years, and it’s my primary go-to address. Sure, you have to tolerate their little sig file on the bottom of every message, but for convenience sake, it’s been the way to go.

I also have a second Yahoo address for my Web site, which I’ve had for almost 6 years. It’s publicly listed on my site, so naturally you’d expect the occasional spam message.

Junk mail comes with the territory – who hasn’t been deluged with offers of Viagra, home mortgages, porn galore, credit cards, and too-good-to-be-true offers from some distant prince in Nigeria? Death, Taxes, and Spam – three things you can’t avoid.

Having a popular Web site with a publicly listed e-mail address, I usually get about 90 – 120 spams a day. It’s a pain in the ass, but what can you do? The spam filters usually catch about 90% of it, and that’s that. You deal with it, you move on. No big whoop.

Then last night hit.

Some jackass selling boner pills sent out a massive spam all over the world, using my e-mail address as his return address. So when I logged in last night, I had close to 1,500 e-mails. All returned spam, all blamed on me.

Jackass.

Most of the messages were those MAILER DAEMON bad e-mail address notifications, but there were a lot of personal “out of office” auto-replies, too. Then there were a few angry replies from those who decided it was necessary to go off on the spammer who sent them that crap.

Problem is, the spamming bastard never saw your reply. He used a phony e-mail return address – my address. So you're cursing at the wrong guy, people. You need to kill the original messenger, not the innocent bystander whose been hijacked by this prick.

Jackass.

I’ve always been very proud of the fact that my Web site doesn’t have any advertising. No pop-ups, no banners, no flashing messages congratulating you on being my one millionth visitor. I never send bulk messages to visitors, and I don’t collect cookies. It’s just not necessary, and quite frankly, it’s rude as hell. True, I may not run the prettiest site ever, and I'm not exactly swimming in multimedia or Flash graphics or 3-D art, but you're also not subjected to a zillion and one Java ads.

It’s not like I couldn’t sell my soul to the Web Devils if I really wanted to – advertisers send me messages all the time asking to slap a banner on my site in exchange for money per click. I usually don't even bother responding to them, 'cause there's no way they're going to talk me into selling ad space.

You see, what I still have (despite it all) is a little bit of pride, and a whole lot of dignity. Why would I want to muck up my site with someone else’s crap? If you really are looking for an erection pill or a lower mortgage rate or your missing classmates, then you’d be out looking for it – not visiting my humble little site. Besides, my site costs me about $9 a month – hardly worth trying to pass the expense on to the general public.

But this scumbag spammer who thinks it’s funny to use my e-mail address for his scams? I hope there’s an extra hot spot in Hell waiting for you, where little demons get to spend all day shoving large manila envelopes down your throat.

Jackass.