public affairs

It’s not bad enough they fill my mailbox and harass my phone. Now they’re sending out their crap pretending to be me, by using one of my domain names as a “return address.” Yeah, I know, it happens all the time. The support guys at my hosting site (let’s hear it for sff.net!) say it’s a spam blast from a distributed botnet of compromised machines around the world, using my hijacked domain name. It’s not coming from my account or site.

But it’s still infuriating. I just want to let the world know: If you have been bothered by spam or scumware claiming to be from anything at [writesf – pointy symbol – com], it didn’t come from me. I’m sorry.

And there’s not a thing I can do about it.

But you know, there really ought to be a special level in Hell for spammers.

Is anyone else noticing this? At least 90% of the calls that come to our house phone these days are spam. At least. It’s gotten so bad that when we do get a real call from a friend, relative, or legitimate business caller, we often miss it because there seems so little point in rushing to get to the phone before it stops ringing. Most of the calls we care about come to our cell phones.

It seems like it’s gotten a lot worse in the last year or so. And yet, I’m reluctant to give up our land line, partly because many of our legitimate contacts know that number but not our cell numbers, and partly because… I don’t know, I just don’t hold with being driven from the use of the phone number I’ve owned and loved for decades, just on account of some lowlifes who are determined to prey on the vulnerable. Plus, just the other day, I used our land line to send a fax. So it still has relevance, right? Right?

You want to make a billion dollars? Invent a device that will send an electric shock back up the phone line to anyone who makes, records, or otherwise causes to exist spam. (Not counting that ham in a can stuff. That’s okay, as long as I don’t have to eat it.) I probably shouldn’t say things like that. Bad dog.