I reviewed my ISP bills and such over the weekend... went to check the mailbox that they provide... an address that I have never given to anyone; the 20MB quota was 99% used; all spam except monthly ISP newsletters.

It used to be that commercial or political spam was sent out by one type of miscreant, while worms and viruses were created and propagated by another type. These days, the two have merged. This is because spammers are using viruses to take control of thousands of people's computers, which the spammers then use to send out their crap. -- 2005 by Jef Poskanzer

I gather that some ISPs would like to automatically put their zombie customers into a sandbox where the only thing they can contact is an ISP web server (not running Windows I hope) where they can download repair tools and security updates, but Microsoft has, depressingly unsurprisingly, been uncooperative when ISPs have asked to redistribute updates on their own servers. -- Taughannock Networks Weblog 23 Jan 2005

Maybe there's hope: Slashdot | FTC Recommends ISPs Disconnect Spam Zombies May 24 2005.

Tags: spam.