Stupid. Pointless. Annoying. Monday

Monday is SPAM day.

All over the world people are firing up their email clients for the first time since Friday lunchtime to download their first spam of the week. Monday is extra special because all that wonderful spam has built up over the weekend patiently waiting for that innocent looking “get mail” button to be hit.

I try and do all the right things to avoid SPAM but no matter what I do, Monday always starts with a few thousands advertisements for herbal remedies which Thunderbird helpfully throws into my junk folder. I disable HTML rendering when viewing emails which makes for some interesting looking Apple iTunes emails. I try not to post my email address publicly and I avoid dodgy looking mailing lists.

My problem is exacerbated by having a fairly high-profile email address. I’ve lost count of the emails I’ve apparently sent to myself asking me to download the attached .exe file to ‘update’ my software. I’ve also sent emails to myself cancelling an email service I never had. Fortunately, that email came with an attachment to allow me to continue using it.

This leads me nicely to the cure for SPAM. We don’t need complex spam filters and other methods of post-processing the inevitable. We just need to get rid of stupid people.

Newsflash. If people actually stopped buying penis enlargement pills, vi*gr/\ (it’s been so long since I last saw that spelt correctly) and other herbel remedies then maybe these bulk mailers would move along and find something else to infest. Last year, the spam industry was worth billions. It’s the ‘get rich quick’ scheme of the 00’s (you know, it’s going to be 16 years before we can use that idiom again properly).

Now we’ve got rid of the advertisment based emails, lets remove all of those who download every attachment they receive and run them thus spreading the virus that ultimately sends me an email. That way the virus would simply die out on its own.

How would we acheive this nirvana?

The very first step of the Windows / Linux / OS X internet connection wizard could be a simple IQ test. That should cut down the ‘net community to about 10% of it’s current size.

Of course, if that were the case, I wouldn’t be able to connect to write this blog entry.