I am spammed, therefore I am – in trouble. And it started so innocently. I was on my computer, checking out my Hotmail account, when my wife glanced over my shoulder and said, “Get anything good?” A loaded question if there ever was one, and especially in this case, since I was viewing the contents of my Junk Mail folder.

Hotmail dumps messages that it suspects are unsolicited advertisements into this folder, but it occasionally sends mailing list messages there as well, so I check it every so often to make sure legitimate mail isn’t getting tossed. As luck would have it, the only message in there had a subject line starting, “Hot Horny Housewives…”

My own wife was, of course, horrified, and wanted to know why I was receiving these messages. I told her it was junk mail, and everyone gets them. She replied, “Well, you must have signed up for something to be on that list. And if you don’t want to get these messages, why don’t you tell them to remove you?” This left me with my mouth hanging open, trying to think of something to say. Should I try to tell her that I post to several public lists with this email address, and that these lists are open invitations to spammers? Should I try to tell her that if I replied to the message, it would either A) bounce, since the spammers have used up that account, or B) be used as evidence that I was a Real User, and therefore worth spamming? Well of course I tried to tell her this, but as my wife, I guess it’s her perogative not to listen. *Sigh* Busted for something I didn’t even do.