Too much of a bad thing?

I've been getting lots more spam lately. But that's not what the title is about. The thing is that most of it is the same message.

For example, the spam folder on my Gmail account has been getting somewhere between 10 and 20 new items a day. But they contain the same title and body. You would think that someone who actually wants you to open the email and click on the link, whether it actually to a refinance site as the message claims, or falsely to some food supplement they've had a hard time selling.

Now, when I get ten identical messages, I know I'm not interested. So I just delete them. But there's another explanation.

What if the spam is all coming from a compromised, i.e. hijacked, computer, who some party would like to see cut off from the internet, or otherwise troubled? If someone attacked my computer and took it over, my ISP would certainly shut off my connection, and inform the authorities. Not a very pleasant thought that.

All it takes is two kids in junior high school, a little argument over nothing of importance, and a very small amount of technical knowledge, and a million people get a whole lot of spam.

That's why we need to phase out SMTP and POP3, and invest in more secure email protocols. Businesses can easily be used to provide electronic identities using corporate key-servers, and local government can provide identities to citizens. Anonymity, something many argue is vital to free speech, must be available, but available perhaps through intermediates such as Anonymizer, who assure your identity will not be discovered, but provide their own mark on the email, to ensure it is legitimate.

Write your senator and tell them you're still getting spam even after all the toothless laws they've passed. Demand that they invest money in a secure internet. Tell them it would be good for business, because it is - they care about that a lot.