buter's BABY blog

I read the news today, oh boy ...
about a lucky man who made the grade
and though the news was about spam
Well I just had to gasp
I really could not grasp ...
John Howard's had a heart attack
He didn't know it but his use has changed
A crowd of newbies got trojans
We'd seen his face before
Nobody is really sure if Norton filters out pollies....*

If you're wondering what that cryptic message is about, well apparently there is a spam floating round in this electioneering year saying that PM John Howard has had a heart attack, and has a link to The Australian's website. Unfortunately for the n00bs out there, the link is actually not to The Australian but to a 404 not found page which attempts to look like the Aust's website, but is in fact a bad place which downloads a trojan to your machine. This then attempts to steal all your money. Kind of like the government, really.

What got me going about this though was the comment in the SMH coverage, "Political and religious emails are not subject to the scrutiny of the Spam Act" ... so ... we can't even complain about emails that we don't want and won't read and that clutter our inboxes if they appear to contain political or religious matters. I can see it now ...

Subject: Jesus saves...
Message: all the money that we Nigerians can send him. Give us your bank details and your Bible bar code so we can spread the largesse.

Subject: John Howard for your PM..
Message: You need a personal masseur don't you, well our hosts are well trained and all named after prominent political figures.

Sheesh.

*apologies to the Beatles ...