Good article in the NY times, talks about what appears to be the best tool for fighting spam which accounts for some 89% of ALL email sent. What is it? Why, money, of course.
A recent study found that a vast majority of the money collected by spammers flows through a small number of financial companies. The best quote from the article is as predictable as it is telling:
Visa, the largest credit card company, declined to comment.
Go read John Markoff’s article, Study Sees Way to Win Spam Fight.
I’m having similar “fun” — expected, of course, when I responded to a “get a free … participation required” ad. Fortunately, most of my participation involved online colleges, and having already enrolled in out outside of this program, they’re easy to get off the phone. “Oh, let me save you some time — I already enrolled in another online college.”
For the rest, I’ve taken a two-pronged defense — first I do the normally ill-advised opt-out, then do a spam-report “lite” via Gmail’s Spam folder. For a minority of spam I can’t recognize as connected to this order, I report them through SpamCop.
And the ol’ Nigeria 419 (hope I remembered the number right) scam seems to be alive and well again. This time, apparently half the UK, the FBI and IRS have moved to China to offer me money! And the IRS quotes sections and subsections of the “constitution,” which can’t be the U.S. Constitution, since it contains no such sections.
Fortunately for me, you can’t BS a BS-er! :-)
Oh, that free offer? The only thing that HASN’T shown up is my free iWhachacallit.