With the white hot fury of a thousand suns, I hate spammers with every fiber of my being.

I do everything I can to keep spam out of my inbox. I have anti-spam resources on my server. I regularly blacklist domains that are used to send spam. I keep my private email account private. Because not everyone who has my email address can be trusted to treat it as respectfully as I do theirs, my email address ends up on spammer lists when they  “Send to all my contacts” the latest chain mail, or put my email address in the TO: field to set out a cat picture to everyone they’ve spoken to in their entire life, or they add my contact information to an online database because they get Points.

Normally, I just quietly blacklist the latest offender, but when I got the following email from Maria Bartell at NetProspex, it made me a more than a little crazy.

They want to send me emails to introduce me to special offers, industry events, or invite me to participate in customer surveys, but, “before we begin sending you emails,” they say, “I want to be certain that our emails are welcome. If you do not want to receive these types of emails in the future, click here:”

In other words, they’re going to send spam, and claim I opted in, because I didn’t opt-out. Gaaaahhhhh.

I’ve added them to my blacklist, so I won’t hear any more from them. However, I have a little message for them:

I shouldn’t have to opt-out of your spam. You should request people to opt-in. Of course, you’d do that, if you weren’t a spammer.

But, as a spammer, you don’t care what I think. Or what any of us really want.

A slow, lingering death that starts with searing pain like a hot poker in your most private parts and radiates to the ends of your toenails, as your hair falls out in fiery patches, taking with it your rotting  flesh bit by mouldering bit, until there’s nothing left but your maggot-ridden remains as you lie in a gutter, praying for the final exit as buzzards peck at your skull, and rats tear away at any damp bits left inside of you, is too good an end for spammers like you.

Should I receive another email from you, I will take it as a personal challenge to call upon all the dark forces of the earth and beyond to make your life on earth more dreadful than Hell itself.

Die, spammer, die.

—

Update 03/01/11: It appears I’m not alone in my hatred of spammers. Since writing this post, I’ve discovered many other blog posts on this same theme. Here are three. Enjoy.

http://onemansblog.com/2009/05/01/i-still-hate-spammers-die-spammers-die/ – Explains why spam is such an expensive problem

http://www.soft.tahionic.com/download-die_spammer_die/anti-spam.html – Love their anti-spam tool!

http://highscalability.com/scaling-spam-eradication-using-purposeful-games-die-spammer-die

Spam is big business, and it costs all of us more money in hosting fees, management fees, and even internet connection fees because of the extreme load spam places on all servers. Spammers are the lowest of the low. They steal from us all.