Spammers are all scumbags, right?
Would that the world were painted in black and white. Anti-spammers on one side, spammers on the other; a unanimous cheer would go up as we metaphorically malletted the spammers one by one. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. It’s not uncommon for otherwise good people to spam because they’ve been sold a service by an unscrupulous spammer. “I’ll send your message to a list of 500,000 opt-in email addresses I’ve assembled”, the spammer will say. Or maybe it’s “Nobody minds getting email like this.” Perhaps they’ve been sold on the “It’s just like junk postal mail” rhetoric. Whatever the specifics, someone somewhere has sold them a boatload of lies and now they’ve spammed, and their business is paying the price. “What’s happening? That nice Mr Spammer said nobody would mind getting our emails. After all, everyone else is doing it,” they will cry. Such people aren’t the enemy; they’ve been wrongly advised, so now’s the time to gently tell them the facts of the matter. Most people in such
