Peter Patera Strikes Back - at Spam!

A fellow blogger, Peter Patera, took a little time (okay, a lot of time) spam-baiting a Sri Lanka spammer into carrying on the most insane email conversation I’ve ever seen. You should read his account if you can afford the time. As I commented there, “If we all join hands and stand our ground, the enemy will flee back to Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Budapest, and other forbidden territories.”

Peter’s emails are tongue-in-cheek and clearly meant to reveal his true intent. But the spammer carries on the conversation, sending Peter all sorts of files and attachments, and in the end, doing five terrible website mockups - for free. All to try and win Peter’s business at a dirt-cheap rate of $14/hour.

Peter admittedly has even more time on his hands than people accuse me of having. But, at least he’s fighting back and giving me pause to think that we all should do this just a bit more and it might have a real chilling effect on spam. I’d say that Peter’s campaign of spam-baiting is a pure piece of American ingenuinity at work - except he’s Canadian. Oh, well, at least he isn’t French Canadian. Plus, he likes Jimmy Buffett so he’s as cool as any Canadian I’ve ever met.

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