I can't believe the amount of spam (and I don't mean the lunch meat) that's been coming through lately. What's even more interesting is the amount of spam that's trying to come through.

For my email, I use a program called Mailwasher. What it does is checks email while it's still on the server, before it's downloaded to my computer. It catches and marks a lot of email that it knows is spam. Some email it's not sure is spam, and it tells you it's possible that it's spam; some legitimate email it marks as spam, but it's legitimate. But that's all okay, because your computer is safe; it never makes it if you remember to block it; that is, unless one slips in at the time you're downloading your legitimate email; timing is everything, after all.

For this blog, it's something much different. Because I use WordPress as my blogging software, I use a plugin called Askimet that catches most of the spam and moves it into a special area where I can just go in and delete it, and it never touches my comments area. That's great, because in just the last two days just over 900 messages have come in, trying to post themselves to my blog. However, it's not perfect, and I did end up having to delete 20 spam messages. But that's much better than 900.

And, an area where some interesting spam has been coming in is through the sign up form on my newsletter page. What's interesting about it is that I get an email with a false first and last name, as well as a false email address, with false messages, but none of the spam is there. It's as if, in some fashion, all the links that are usually associated with spam messages are eliminated, even if none of the programs can stop the emails themselves. I guess I'll take that also, and I still get to delete those messages off the server before I download all my legitimate email.

The logical part of me doesn't fully understand this mass spam email. At this point, do they really think someone is going to buy a product that comes through in an email with multiple links? It's possible that most of them are spyware, malware, or even virus email, but that would also seem inconsistent with spam that has multiple links. However, some messages do come through without links, but strange messages embedded within the images that will show up if one happens to download it, in an attempt to get past programs that scan email before it's allowed to show up in an inbox; images can make some of those programs ineffective.

I guess we just have to live with the spam as the cost of using email for free, so to speak, and for our freedom of speech rights, or as much of them as we're allowed. We all just need to remember to be cautious in what we download to, or open on, our computers.