My March Popular Science column, called Spam and Punishment, is online now. It’s a piece on the spam wars and how to fight them:
As much as I would love to get rich quick, increase my stamina, and receive that pesky degree that I never got (I dropped out of four universities in two years), I have never bought a single item as a result of an unsolicited e-mail. Have you? Fact is, most spam is inherently fraudulent. It pretends to be from your friends or bank, and it peddles goods that are either illegal or rip-offs, like quack pharmaceuticals. So why can’t we prosecute the people responsible for it?
Because, it turns out, today’s overtaxed cybercops and district attorneys are ill-equipped to chase down and identify spammers, who work very hard to hide themselves online. In the grand scheme of things, the problem just doesn’t command a lot of law-enforcement mind-share. This is terribly frustrating for the legions of amateur volunteer spam- fighters who devote endless hours to tracking down creep spammers.
