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Interesting Ars Technica article on spam:

From April 1 to May 1, McAfee ran an experiment with 50 volunteers designed to measure just how much spam a person would receive if they actually registered at all the sites that request your e-mail address. The total amount of spam that comes flooding down the system is almost awe-inspiring.

I think spammers may be getting more clever¹. For the first time in a year, I got two pieces of spam this morning. I’ve had one more since. If this continues, I’m going to have to turn on more options than just Akimset.

Or maybe spammers just really like posts that mention Indiana Jones.

1. This is clever in the clever monkeys sense. But not more intelligent, obviously. [↩]

The one category nobody’s talked about when comparing Acorn and Pixelmator: Will the company spam you?

So far, I’ve been spammed by Pixelmator’s partners twice. I posted to their support board asking them if they were aware of this, and they deleted the post. I’ve posted the same question again, on the grounds that maybe (just maybe) they deleted the post by mistake. It’s also possible they didn’t know about the spam runs. Still, it isn’t looking too good.

For those curious, why do I categorize it as spam?

• I never asked for the email.
• It’s bulk.

There’s other factors, too (like I don’t know the company that sent it) but in all honesty, those two are enough to categorize it as spam: It’s unsolicited commercial email.

On the other hand, Flying Meat has never spammed me.

Pixelmator has at this point eliminated themselves from the finals. Looking at the products, it makes me sad that one of them had to win this way. But there’s no way I’m buying something from spamtards.

A South Korean duo have been arrested for sending 1.6 billion spams between September and Deccember 2006.

I have some awesome spam subject lines today:

• Swarms of SUVs hunt for parking spots.
  I like the imagery of this. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a typical pump & drop. Boring.
• ringworm frenzy
  This email wins the award for “email with subject line most likely to turn me off of ever clicking it.” Seriously, the only way to turn me off more would be to throw a “rectal” in there somewhere. It appears to have the same origin as the first email, so apparently you either love or hate the subject lines.
• Passover Hotline
  Another pump & drop, although from a different source this time. This one made me wonder: What would a Passover Hotline do? Walk people through putting lamb blood on their doors, perhaps?