No Such Weblog

Spammers cause ever new embarassments. This week-end, we were visiting my parents. Thanks to Apple's excellent OS X, they are reasonably comfortable with their computer (well, mostly) which mostly serves as a repository for digital photography, and for exchanging e-mail and instant messages with me. Fortunately, their e-mail addresses haven't made it onto any spammers' lists, yet. You can probably imagine my surprise when I was suddenly questioned about some porn they had recently found in their inbox. The solution: This wasn't porn addressed to them, but a bounce message. Some spammer had, apparently, guessed my father's e-mail address (<first name>@does-not-exist.org; the first name isn't that rare), and had been using it as the sender's address for obscene spam. That spam hadn't reached the intended recipient, though, but my parents. No, I'm not suggesting that "adult content", "obscenity", or whatever you want to call it be banned online. But I don't want to be asked by my parents where that porn in their inbox comes from, either.

In more pleasant news on the spam front, Wired reports that Dutch police have arrested 52 people suspected of being involved with Nigerian scam schemes.