Posted on Friday 29th of September 2006 at 05:09 in The Internet

Spam is the new Boogeyman

While few of you hide under your bed afraid of emails offering penile enhancement; maybe you should because spam follows you everywhere you go. At least the Boogeyman had the courtesy to remain hidden.

Unless you're the sort of person who openly rejects technology and refuses to remain "connected" (although, I doubt you'd be here if you were), you will have noticed that spam is able to follow you around your daily duties. It's easier than ever to check your emails on the move and new communication methods are becoming popular, RSS on your PDA anyone? All of this means that you can remain connected anywhere, but it also means President Ghinjko of Zimbabwe can offer you a percentage of his $15,654,470,102,920 fortune.

While you have spam filters on your email (which are reasonably effective) other areas remain largely unprotected. Your mobile phone, for example.

SMS Spam
This week Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel subscribers (in the US) apparently received "unsolicited text messages" promoting stocks. How entirely unacceptable is that?! While you expect your email address to "do the rounds" because you have registered to 101 different companies using it, but your mobile phone is among the most personal communication devices available and to receive spam on it is a low point of this golden age of communication. Does this indicate that our mobile inboxes are likely to become spammed more in the future? Therefore meaning that wherever you are, spam is going to get you. Good news for those who find enjoyment in observing phishing in action, but for the majority of us it is a serious annoyance.

Spam is a scarier bedtime story...
Spam is coming at you through your door, through your email, through your SMS... If Futurama is to be believed then our dreams are next! So the next time you are telling a child a bedtime story, maybe the Boogeyman should be used for younger children who are too young to cope with the concept of an unstoppable evil that can get you at any time, anywhere in the world (with a signal obviously).

 

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