[extropy-chat] Spam

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Here's one to watch for: one day you get a spam
> which
> shows a shocking image of child pornography or
> abuse,
> which pops up without your doing anything.  Then a
> message comes up a little later which claims to be
> from
> a government agency of some sort, saying that it has
> detected an illegal downloaded image of child
> pornography
> on the hard disk, making the owner of that computer 
> punishable by 10 yrs in the slammer, etc.
> 
> It would not surprise me if as many as 10% of the
> proles
> were to fall for that trick, toss the whole infernal
> device
> into the trash.  Actually Im surprised something
> like that 
> hasn't already happened.

Bring it on.  Most of those who would fall for it are
probably those who also fall for spam commerce; with
them off the 'Net, spammers would lose most of their
external revenue, and thus probably eventually start
shutting down when they can not afford to go on (no
matter if they're still deluded about the profit
potential).  Careful crafting of the message could
make non-American suckers believe that the US is
trying to assert its law over everyone in the world in
this matter, and thus that they personally have
something to fear.  Between the diplomatic fallout
from this, and protest from the clued-in fraction of
American Netizens, the US government would likely
suddenly take the lead in being *very* spam-hostile.