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Vengeance is ours say the spam victims

Now it has to be said that New Zealanders and supporters of the All Blacks are not my favourite mob at the moment courtesy of the Bledisloe Cup rugby loss we have just suffered.

However, there is news from across the Tasman Sea that brings warmth and cheer to this only-slightly-irregularly-beating heart.

For it is a tale of vengeance and justice straight out of the Old Testament and is definitely an eye for an eye sort of stuff.

Once upon a time ... over in the Land of the Long White Shroud, there an lived an evil internet spammer who made his living sending more than 100 million unwanted messages a day.

This pustular scumbucket's name is Shane Atkinson, although we'll call him pustular scumbucket for short.

Anyway, this man is responsible for the millions of messages about penis enlargement that clog the Netwaves and he was outed by a newspaper last week.

Since then, the scumbag has been copping abuse from all quarters and anti-spammers have given him a right-royal rogering.

He's had more than 20 phone calls at his house - I'd give you that and his address if I had it - and his personal details have been plastered over the Web. Hopefully he'll cop hard-disk loads of crap mail!

He's also been subscribed to gay dating services and hundreds of email lists and his servers have been shut down.

Unfortunately there are no anti-spam laws in NZ but we live in hope the authorities can find something to give this arsehole a legal going over as well.

Mind you, it seems spammers have done a really stupid thing and have pissed off people you don't want to piss off. No, it's not the mafia - or even the taxman - but rather the Chinese government.

Now while most Western nations fluff about and do sod all about spamming, maybe the Chinese will take a more pragmatic and sensible line.

Hopefully, they'll track the scum down, line them up against a wall and shoot the lot of them. Or, maybe, they could run over them slowly in tanks - a la Tianenmen Square.

If there is something that has really got up your nose, let Grumpy Old Coot know at grumpy@webwombat.com