...Hidey-Ho readers! It's time once again for yet another interaction with my favorite (and sometimes yours) spammer. This one's been building up for awhile, but I was recently sent over the edge on it and decided it was time.

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Dear Mr. Spammer,

It's been quite some time since I wrote back to, as I've been slogging through all the mail folders that have been filled with penny stock adverts and mail in foreign languages. But now you've tried a new tactic in order to hide your spam and it's quite innocent until you've received a hundred of them.

This time I'm talking about those darn petitions you're sending out. You know the ones - a day of recognition for this, or bring back that television show, or make viagra an over the counter medication. Oh yes, Mr. Spammer, they're spam.

First you have to think about the legitimacy of it all. Making viagra an over the counter isn't going to happen anytime soon, so just stop sending spam for that. It's silly, not to mention potentially dangerous. Sending one about bringing back a television show that I have absolutely no interest in or maybe have never seen is not really a good use of your time as well.

Now, days of recognition for something or other political purposes might be worthy. A day recognizing breast cancer survivors is a worthy cause. Recognizing the need for organ or blood donation is good. A day or recognition for something that most people have never heard of, or the occurrence of it is 1 in a million, well... I'd rather throw my support to the lottery because the odds are about the same. If I knew someone personally that was suffering I'd probably bake a casserole, or offer to clean their house instead of signing an electronic document and sending it around to people who've never heard of this individual and will never ever meet them.

I'm not saying it's bad, but it's, well, limited in scope because money and recognition goes to things that are huge. Again, it's not a bad thing, but most people you're going to send that too aren't going to care enough to lend their names and email addresses to the darn things...

...oh wait, is that what you *want*? For us to submit our names and email addresses so that you can better target the spam instead of running generic runs of mail? Oh, clever, clever Mr. Spammer.

I'm onto you now, Mr. Spammer, you'd better watch it. I've got my eye on you.

-WG- *who thinks signing a petition should still involve a pen and paper and not bits and bytes*