I do police this and appreciate that forum participants quickly call my attention to it when I miss it. I used to send a nice letter to the spammer telling them to play nice and not do it in the future etc but now I immediately ban them and delete all posts by them and replies. One thing that helps us here is that we do require registration with a valid email address--that's why we go through that, to prevent spam. So, if you see what you think is spam (which includes any offer to sell or just garbage mail) just let me know.

George,

The reason I referenced the article and put in its link was that researchers in security have found that some of the most sophisticated "hacker" techniques like taking over unsuspecting users computers with "bots" and then sending e-mail from that computer is now being used by spammers, and that the "network" of servers and commandeered legitimate user computers is spread over 166 different countries. In other words the the spam may be coming from a perfectly legitimate user's computer unbeknownst to the user. In addition a hacker technique for stealing e-mail addresses is now also being used by spammers. As you know from awhile back a hacker stole my address and used it to distribute spam. Fortunately these thefts only last a short time until the phony use of the address is identified, and then the offending spammer moves on to another stolen address.

Apparently most citizens oppose government regulation of the internet because they fear a loss of privacy. Unfortunately that thinking assumes privacy and the anonymity that is now allowed by the internet are the same, in other words not having to identify yourself protects privacy. It doesn't really because some companies find it profitable to gather dossiers on just about everyone so they can sell information about people to other companies, and no one is protected from this practice because it is apparently legal.

In other words individual users, like myself are vulnerable, because our identities are not established and necessary to obtain an internet address and access to the web. If a law required registering your computer, like your car, including rock solid proof of identity and your residence location, it would be possible to screen out the phony and stolen addresses and most spam could be easily blocked. But because the internet is not regulated and it is too easy to get access and an address, those with criminal intent have an open invitation to take advantage of the system, and they do. So my in-box is loaded with more junk than legitimate messages, and I suspect most people have the same problem.