As everyone who will ever read this, I get spam in my e-mail. Mine seems to fall into one of three categories. The first is a Nigeria scam about helping some poor, pathetic soul collect mega bucks, supposedly from someone who has died and left a fortune. I’m not sure what is worse: that there are people desperate enough to believe that message, or that there are people despicable enough to prey on despair. The result is despicable Con is desperate to send money to the desperate will never see again.

The third type is not so innocent. These people, like other types of people when you talk, surf the web, find sites and harvest email addresses from the “contact us” link. Rather than start out by sending you what they have to offer, they get Devious, Sneaky, and just plain under-handed. They send you a message requesting more information about what you offer on your site. When you answered graciously, it turns out that they could not care less about what you have to offer. All they want is to verify your email address so they can start to copy offers you, hope you will buy something from them. Nasty taste.

The second type comes from people who sound innocent enough. They have a product or a company or service or anything else that is totally legitimate. They surf the web, find one of my sites, find the “contact us”, and send me information on what they have to offer. I guess, in their minds, it is no different than walking on the street or go through the phone book to write down the addresses and then send out bulk business mail with the same offering. They could get the same information on more money and less time by buying a mailing list. This is perfectly legitimate. Harvesting email addresses off of Web sites, it is not. Spam is officially defined as “unwanted junk mail.” The key word is “undesirable.” If I did not ask for it and send it anyway, it is unsolicited. When people harvest e-mail addresses off of websites and then send commercial messages, which by definition is spam. I report them to my ISP and you should too.