Spam News

First, you may have noticed a marked decrease in spam email messages of the last couple of weeks, thanks almost entirely to Brian Krebs work in closing down McColo, a San Jose-based web hosting company that was thought to be responsible for about 75% of all spam on the internet.

Krebs, a Washington Post reporter for specializes in security and technology, had spent the last couple of months documenting the true business of McColo, which was to provide servers that controlled huge spam-relay networks that are favored by criminals in the cyber world.

Krebs used this information to document the activity for service providers, who promptly shut it down. Certainly the spam networks will find new hosting, most likely in offshore locations out of reach of legitimate business and law enforcement hands, but we should celebrate this small victory.

In other spam news, there's a shortage of Spam, the pseudo-meat product. Hormel, the alchemists behind Spam, has its workers toiling seven days a week to keep up with the demand for Spam, driven primarily by the current economic woes and the proclivity of America's fear response to include stocking up on firearms and potted meat products.

“People are realizing it’s not that bad a product,” said Dan Johnson, 55, who operates a 70-foot-high Spam oven.

I'm not sure how one could consider a salty, gelatinous rectangular meat product yummy, but perhaps that's the reason people are awakening to the fact that "...it's not that bad..." compared to starvation or cat scampi. Will we see Madison Avenue ad agencies cranking out a winter series of commercials with the tagline, "Spam - it's not that bad"???