The photographer of this Creative Commons licensed image “found this Spam can in a 7 Eleven in Santa MarÃa.”
Yesterday, I was upstairs checking an issue on one of our web servers. I ran into Yosef, who is in charge of our email system. He was sharing the success of some newly installed spam interception software that truly had cut down a significant amount of inbound email spam.
He said, “And it is interesting, we get all kinds of interesting statistics… like we know who at Maricopa gets the most spam.”
So I as curious. Is it one of our executives? One of our vocal faculty? A student? And so I could not help but ask, “And who is number one?”
He let out a hearty laugh, put his arm on my shoulder, and said, “Congratulations! it’s you!”
I know I get a lot, but that much?
I know it is largely because in the first 7, 8 years of our web server, I thought it was useful to put my email address as a contact in the footer of every MCLI web page. There was no thought in those days of harvesters, bots, and things that would use email addresses for shameful things. It might have been in 10,000 different web pages, and although all fo our sites since about 2000 have been changed to use a web-based form feedback, there are still a lot of old pages with my email address hanging out.
Once an email address is harvested by one spam agent, it is pretty much toast.
At least my status will change when they de-activate my account after April 7.
What an honor! I cannot think of a prouder moment in my professional career.
Congratulations Alan! What an accomplishment! Now you can go out with a splat as they squash the most spammed e-mail account in the district!
Laugh! Out! Loud!
That is too funny. You must be SO glad you are getting a shiny new short email address. Your days as Spam King are numbered. The king is dead, er, long live the king?