I wouldn't have thought it possible, but I actually received an honest spam message yesterday. Of course, the sender got SpamCop'ed.

The weird thing is that I discovered I am incapable of feeling any respect for spammers. I would have thought that, if someone had the guts to openly say they were spamming, I would respect that. However, I don't. These people are still the dregs of society, as you will see from the text of the message. Here goes...

First off, the message starts with the usual disclaimer:

"The reason YOU are recieving the TWICE PER WEEK "CONFIDENTIAL Money Making Newsletter" Because you Opted-In and Subscribed directly with us."

This is, of course, bullshit. I never opt-in to messages, particularly with the email address that this one arrived at. I should also point out at this stage that I'm not even going to start on the grammar, punctuation, spelling and general language difficulties that this slimebag exhibits. Now, where was I? Ah, yes:

"My name is Richard Schuler, I'm a 23 year old Multi-Millionare and I'm inviting you to Learn How to Spam Millions of People Per Day like I do with my Online Pharmacy Business. My Company - [Asshole] Systems - sends OVER 600 MILLION SPAM E-MAILS per day, every single day, through a rapidly growing network of saavy and aggressive worldwide marketing partners. We are directly responsible for up to 70% of the online Viagra and Pharmacy sales on the net today and by far the largest E-Mail Marketing operation of this kind in the world, bar none!"

Now, quite apart form the obvious difficulties Mr Schuler shows in avoiding the caps lock and shift keys on his undoubtedly expensive keyboard, the thing that riles me is the blatant pride he shows in being scum. His company sends over 600 million spam emails per day... that's an awful lot of download time and bandwidth being wasted. That's an awful lot of other people's money being wasted. Anyway, let's move on:

"Why are we so successful?? 1. Because NO ONE can bring us down! And 2. Because we KICK ASS with Our HACKER PROOF and ANTI-SPAMMER PROOF sales websites and because when you get right down to it, PEOPLE ARE LIKE SHEEP, and if the "sheep" get enough e-mail shoved at them, the sheep WILL become customers! It's that simple and it's the key to our success and the prosperity of our partners! We've just kicked off a drive to recruit THOUSANDS of new sales partners and affiliates. Some of our largest Spammers are being paid $55,000 per week! Contact us and JOIN US NOW!"

First off, he's an ass: no web site is hacker-proof or anti-spammer proof. Then there's the big reason there's so many spammers in the world: the unfortunate truth that people are like sheep. If more of us resisted loudly, never replied, forwarded messages to ISPs and used spam-reporting services, Mr Schuler could stick his spamming business where the sun doesn't shine.

That, unfortunately, is what happens when a technology makes its way into everyone's home. When computers were difficult and technical, there was much less spam: now it's cheap and easy, and every mindless idiot on the planet can get online and respond to the pond-scum's adverts.

And who pays? We do.