Is 2011 Going to be “The Year of Spam”?

By Irene Conlan -

This morning I had 217 copies of the same message in my email each one from a different ID and IP.  The message read:

“Hello. I remember i had seen this site before…This guy made a exact copy of your site. Or possible this is also your site?”

It’s bad enough to have my blog flooded with spam but to have the same illiterate message repeated 217 times is really annoying.  I understand trying to get a message out under the spam radar. Trust me. I get it. If it’s possible to get my message out to a  massive list of people and even a small percent buy what I’m selling, I can make big profits. If I can get my link on millions of websites, I’m way ahead. I think that’s the idea. Right?

It comes from software designed to to send massive email without being designated as spam and, therefore, blocked. I don’t have a problem with this for legitimate business use. In fact, I have received a few unsolicited mailings that brought information or an opportunity to me that I needed. I DO have a problem with the mailings that target blog comments – mine and yours – and fill my blog with porno, illiteracy, gibberish and languages I don’t recognize. It makes it almost impossible to sort out the real comments that should be posted with the article it responds to and if it exceeds the allowed bandwidth and disk space it could potentially crash the blog.

If I am getting all this, others must be getting it as well. The volume seems to be growing exponentially on my blog and I imagine everyone who is getting hit is getting hit harder as the weeks pass.

Does anyone have a solution?  This isn’t normal spam so how do we stop it?

I am absolutely opposed to regulation of the Internet. It is one of the last bastions of free speech in the world today and, in my opinion, is critical  if freedom is to be sustained. However spam and cyber-stalkers will seriously put this freedom in jeopardy.  While I do have a cyber-stalker, it is the spam that is causing me the most concern right now.

It’s the same old deal. Just like the school bully ruins everyone’s day, the spammers are doing a good job of ruining the freedom we have experienced on the Internet. It is called selfishness and greed. There have always been those who will hurt anyone who gets in their way or use other people’s stuff as there own. They use the Internet, too.

If you have a solution, let me know.

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