Spam deaths: A lesson for us all

There have been a lot of media reports since the tragic news began to trickle through overnight on the suicide of escaped spammer Edward "Eddie" Davidson, and the apparent murder of his wife and daughter.

Charles Arthur, technology correspondent for The Guardian newspaper, has put it more succinctly than I ever could in a blog post entitled "Unutterably sad":

It's all a loss. If you ever needed a reason not to indulge spammers, it's there.

Charles is right. If there's one lesson we can all take from this sorry episode it's that none of us must ever encourage the crime of spam by clicking on links, buying goods sold via spam, or leaving our computers open to relaying junk mail.

It's been 30 years since the first ever spam email, and yet a survey we conducted at the end of 2007 showed that 11% of respondents admitted to having bought goods advertised via spam.

If you haven't already done so, don't you think it's time you took the spam pledge?