Moon over my spammy

It seems my current email address has finally been discovered by the spammers. It started as a trickle - one or two a day - but lately I'm getting about a dozen daily. No penis enlargement ads yet, thankfully, because that usually signals the floodgates are open and it's time to get a new email address.

It started as investment recommendations, penny stocks someone was trying to pump. After that came offers for cheap pharmaceuticals (like I'm gonna buy prescription drugs from a bunch of scumbags). Lately the biggest offenders have been these stupid e-greeting cards ("Someone in your family has sent you an online greeting card!") which I can only assume are a phishing scheme.

Outlook does a decent job of picking up most of it but the greeting cards seem to get through. What irritates me the most is that I have a spam email address already - in fact I've had it for ten years now. I use it to fill out any online forms, make online purchases and sign up for online services. The spammers are welcome to write to me at that address, as often as they like, and when I'm really in the mood to read spam (like, never) I can go there and read it. It's a perfect arrangement - everybody should be happy.

Alas, this just isn't good enough for the spammers. They imagine somehow they are going to trick me into considering their crap longer than it takes to click "delete" - that I'm somehow going to think that offer for the penis enlarger is a testimonial from a friend whose name I just can't put to a face at the moment. They think I'm drunk, or stupid, or desperate.

We wouldn't tolerate someone breaking into peoples houses looking for some way to dishonestly liberate us from our money. But this is essentially what the spammers targeting my personal, not-for-spam email address are doing. They most likely got my address by putting spyware on the computer of someone else who has me in their address book for legitimate reasons. Actually, in a way what they are doing is even worse, considering the amount of personal data stored on most peoples computers (unless they break in and access your computer when doing so - that would be worse).

I understand that catching and prosecuting spammers can be difficult. Yet somehow, when some hacker breaks into a big corporations computer system the government marshals the resources to at least pursue the case. So why not simply treat the people perpetrating the spam as hackers? When caught, ban them from even using a computer for fifteen years. Fine them. Send them to jail. And how about a $1000 dollar fine per spam for the "businesses" using spam to advertise? Create a national "do not spam" database and any advertisements sent to an address on the list are subject to the fine.

It wouldn't stop the phishing but I think it's a step in the right direction. Does anyone have a problem with this?

****Update: Got this today - "Try Penis Enlarge Patch and even a horse will be jealous of your penis."

It has begun...