Think spam has peaked? Sorry to say, it’s getting worse. As this story at SouthBendTribune.com reports, spammers are branching out into new frontiers. They’re clogging up cell phones, for instance, and polluting the comment areas of blogs like this one. In the past month, I’ve deleted over 100 links to porn, gambling, and other sites. The MSN Group that we set up for readers of Windows XP Inside Out gets subscription requests every day from scam artists whose desire is to post more come-ons to the same crap.
I’m sick of it. Technology can block most of this stuff, but that’s a reactive approach. The fact is that the spam industry is dominated by a handful of people who build the tools and exploit the weaknesses in the Internet. Taking down a few high-profile players in this industry could go a long way towards cleaning up the mess.
Meanwhile, the good ol’ Delete key gets way more use than it was ever built to withstand.