When you hear of cases such as:
According to a Reuters article that hit the wires on June 23rd, software engineer Jason Smathers, 24, who worked in AOL's headquarters in Dulles Virginia, was able to access and appropriate the screen names, zip codes and "credit card types" of AOL's 92 million customers. Jason then allegedly sold this rich vein of information to Sean Dunnaway, a spammer in Las Vegas, for $52,000.
it is difficult to believe that the plague of spam can ever be stopped. At least those caught for the AOL affair face, if convicted, up to 5 years in jail and fines of up to $250,000. Unless some bottom-feeding lawyer gets them off, of course.
My ISP has, fortunately. introduced very effective anti-spam software. I used to get a daily deluge of 90-100 e-mails from the usual viagra peddlers, willy-enlargers, porn-brokers and get-rich-quick merchants whereas now it's only a couple a day - which get reported straight back to the ISP abuse people for them to improve the filtering.
It would be so satisfying to see these identity thieves ruined financially and then sent to spend 5 years making sure they don't drop the soap in the prison showers..... Might just send a message to the rest of these scumbags.