I used to be a bit bemused by spam. I mean, how did it present a security issue or anything other than a minor inconvenience? How hard was it to press ‘delete’?

Now, a few things have happened.

(1) I’m getting spammed on WordPress in an infuriating manner. I have to scan through my comment moderation queue to check for real comments through a very long list of spam comments, some of which are 100 links long, each on a separate line. It’s time consuming and irritating and I’m sure I occasionally spam out some real comments, for which I apologise. Should I force human authentication or OpenID for commenters? I really don’t want to…

(2) I check my mail on my mobile. So spam there takes a little more time and fiddling to delete, and that’s just annoying.

(3) Lots of ‘valid’ emails get caught in spam filters.

(4) People have started spoofing my domain.

Who pays for this kind of marketing? Is it all spyware, phishing and sex-sites? I really hope they work it out soon…