The Anonymous Widower

A Deal for Obama

Every day, I get masses of useless spam e-mails from his country.  I’ve had five this morning trying to sell me a set of kitchen knives. Actually for other reasons, shouldn’t selling knives by mail-order be illegal. It might even be!  See BBC Watchdog for details.

 So here’s the deal.

We’ll put our best engineers and scientists on the solving of the oil spill, if he puts his best lawyers and computer programmers on the problem of spam.

Doesn’t he realise that spam is one of the reasons many people don’t like the United States! Nothing you do seems to stop it, as much is actually legal in the States, but spammers ignore the law.

Thinking about this more, I’d include the large number of unwanted phone calls <I get from the States as well trying to sell me cruises and useless shares.  Those ignore the Telephone preference Service< which should mean I don’t get any unwanted calls.  But then Americans aren’t bound by UK law or even common decency.

June 15, 2010 - Posted by | Computing | , ,

9 Comments »

  1. I dont get adverts for products as much as emails begging me not to break the chain of prayer for “our brave boys in Afghanistan”. I delete them. I am a pacifist.

    My spam box has stuff in, but I ignore that

    Comment by Liz P | June 15, 2010 | Reply

  2. It’s funny how much spam invokes God. I’m an atheist and a humanist, so any message with religion in it, gets deleted.

    Comment by AnonW | June 15, 2010 | Reply

  3. Except this (the original post) implies that the government should be responsible for either problem, which they absolutely should not.

    Comment by RyanR | June 15, 2010 | Reply

  4. If you can hate America because of spam, I can hate Europe for socialism, Russia for the mob, and Turkey because they probably have Twinkies there.

    What a moronic idea–to dislike a country because it is a spam source.

    Comment by Aaron C. de Bruyn | June 16, 2010 | Reply

  5. America is reponsible for the spam problem becuse it does nothing to lock the spammers up, despite having a supposed law to stop spam. See something like Spamhaus for more details.
    I’ve just spent nearly an hour unsubscribing from various US lists, that I never subscribed for, for things like new bathrooms, windows and all sort of unwanted junk. I probably think the only way to stop it is change my e-mail address. Can I charge the US and the other spam countries like Ukraine for my time?

    America should also get it’s gun laws civilsed, sort out its addiction to fossil fuels and abolish the death penalty. I have not bought American products for many years, except where the company has ethical standards.

    Comment by AnonW | June 16, 2010 | Reply

  6. It’s a bit hypocritical for a UK resident to complain about US spam law when his own country is refusing to impliment the EU directives on privacy and when the UK has major spam providers of its own.

    So here’s my deal; you extradite and jail the heads of, e.g., SBC, and send the heads of, e.g., BT to us for trial.

    As for a “supposed law to stop spam”, don’t ever confuse a law with its contents. S977, (you) CAN-SPAM, is legislation purchased by the DMA to prevent, e.g., California, from passing and enforcing meaningful legislation. Laws and sausages.

    You may be confused by the fact that the UK is a parliamentary democracy and the PM is effectively an agent of Parliament. In the US the executive and the legislature are independent; Obama can’t pass laws.

    Comment by Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz | June 17, 2010 | Reply

  7. I hate all spam.

    But look at this list of major spammers from Spamhaus!
    http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/

    It would probably be a good idea if the US did extradite the Chairman of BT on spam charges, after all it’s impossible for the UK to extradite anybody from the US, as the law is one way, thanks to Tony Blair and George Bush.

    Comment by AnonW | June 17, 2010 | Reply

  8. Best lawyers and computer programmers won’t kill spam. People may…

    Why do we tolerate spam on public TV, radio, phone, and paper mail better than on the Internet?

    * If your answer mentions costs, then we are going to keep spam, and oil spills. Minimizing short-term costs is a bait we cannot reject.

    * If your answer mentions freedom, then try and change the Internet. When we’ll have a working solution, we may want to apply it to the rest as well.

    Comment by Ale | June 17, 2010 | Reply

  9. I take it that you feel that banning spam would be against personal freedom. I don’t tolerate spam in any form. I never listen to radio or TV with adverts unless I have to, my phone is signed up to the Telephone Preference Service, which bans unwanted phone calls and the junk mail is immediately recycled without opening. I don’t tolerate it especially when it is targeted at my late wife, who died in 2009. Suffering that is very hard. Any company that does it goes on my banned list, who I never will deal with again. You’d be surprised at how good some companies are and how bad others are when you complain.

    Interestingly, most of the calls I get in violation of the TPS are from the United States or somewhere like China. There is no way I can stop them, despite letters to my MP and all the relevant authorities. Often they are selling cruises, holidays in Florida or investments, I wouldn’t touch with your bargepole. I went to Florida once and it’s full of theme parks. But I did see the space-shuttle take off. That was impressive, especially as my company was very much involved in the planning of the turnrounds between each flight.

    Comment by AnonW | June 17, 2010 | Reply


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