The level of spam has been annoying me lately. About 80 - 90% of my inbox now consists of this glorious substance. When I have a little spare time and sufficient levels of anger to motivate me, I always like to engage in a little spammer poisoning. Here is what I like to do:

Any request to “verify my account details” (usually with PayPal or some bank I have not got an account with), I always click on the link and key in some false details. If enough people do this kind of thing, the spammers will be flooded with so much garbage, it will not be worth their while to continue this kind of scam. There is a brilliant website at http://www.darkcoding.net/index.php/credit-card-numbers/ which can generate legitimate-looking credit card numbers to enter into their forms.

Any marketing scheme to sell Viagra, rolexen or whatever else, I visit and if I feel really annoyed, see if I can order one using a fake card number, fake delivery address etc. The advertiser will have to pay for the click-through and they will become pissed off at the spammer for all the dodgy orders and non-sale click-throughs if enough people do this kind of thing.

Any spam that only has an email address and no website, I send them an email simply saying “You suck”.

If they only have a phone number, there is not much I can do since they are mostly U.S. phone numbers and it would cost too much for me to dial them but I encourage anyone who actually lives in the U.S.A. to dial them up and tell them that they suck (especially if it is a toll- free number).

Now I hear a lot of you saying that these techniques will just let them know I exist and thus attract more spam but I already get all the spam anyway I am sure so what have I got to lose by annoying these bastards as much as I can.