Protect the spammers

A recent wave of spam contains an advert for spamming services. An email signed 'Jodi Parker' offers to provide access to an email list of 630 million addresses. These are "the freshest gathered of email addresses" and come as part of a service that includes a "fully licensed bulk email sender". Unusually, the spammer has included his own email address in the message.

A price list is also included, with one million Algerian addresses costs just $5,999 - a bargain.

Mikko Hypponen from Security company F-Secure reported on the spammer spamming his own spamming services on Friday 19th September 2008. He noted that the spammer's email address was info@bulk-mail.org and that the spammer had written this address in the form: info [at] bulk-mail [dot] org. This is a technique used to avoid attracting spam. I'm sure we can all appreciate the irony.

Mikko acted very responsibly in his posting by requesting that no-one makes copies of the spammer's email address (info@bulk-mail.org) to their blogs and to other parts of the internet. Imagine his disappointment, then, when he discovered that people had ignored his plea and have started copying the address to different websites. It's almost as if they *want* a spammer to receive spam.