Spam attacks get everywhere

Whatever it was that happened on Twitter yesterday – the stomach falling in and revealing cauldrons of spam – speaks to the frailty of our techno cyber dependence these days.

I am currently the victim of a mass bombardment of my inbox by a campaign to “save” assorted prisoners in Iran. It happens that I am a self confessed Iranophile in that I have been there a lot (was there during the revolution and beyond).

Covering the country since has not been easy. Nor indeed has the process been easy of trying to cope with the international response to it all.

But what have I done to deserve upwards of one thousand copycat emails that have clogged my box and consumed far too much time as I remove them to my junk box and “block sender”? The action has been completely counter productive. Not only will I do nothing about the unfortunate people for whom these misguided emailers plead, but I am developing an irrational dislike (I won’t put it stronger) of every one of these emailers for defiling “my property”. Who are they?

In desperation over the weekend I called my own computer support people. They did their best, but the “spam blocker” is some third party company that specialises in these things and so far their systems have failed.

In any case, I get so much good info from my Iranian contacts via email, I don’t want to risk spamming them in order to keep out these marauding invaders.

Being of a highly techie nature, I have analysed the problem. The stomach of my inbox has fallen in and revealed a cauldron of idiots who think collective bombardment of a journalist’s inbox is in some way going to help their cause.

It has achieved precisely the opposite outcome. In the meantime, I’m looking out for a stomach stapler!