March 5, 2006

Friggin' Joe Jobbers

Of all the forms of spammers, Joe Jobbers are among the worst.

Joe Jobbers are those who send spam that purports to come from real people.  Those real people, who are entirely innocent, get buried in bounce notices, get blamed and labeled as spammers, and sometimes end up on the receiving end of hostile phone calls from angry recipients.

Joe Jobbers have been using my name for a while.  And now there is a Joe Jobber out there who is spamming the US Congress with sex spam using my name.

Herodotus (b. 490 BC, d. 420 BC (approx.)) documented an appropriate punishment for Joe Jobbers:

In Book 1 of The Histories, at paragraph 92, it is recorded that King Croesus executed an ill-doer by "dragging him on a carding-comb".

Ouch!

(I do have SPF records in place for those who are willing to check whether it comes from one of my legitimate mail servers, but most receivers don't do the check.  And the IETF is wandering around in the desert of procrastination about it's preferred alternative to SPF.)

Posted by karl at March 5, 2006 12:31 AM