I am not sure which one is worse. The pop up advertisements or the junk mails. I have no complaint about the pop up ads that I get when I go to any site where I am accessing free content (i.e most sites). Its their right to subject me atrocious advertisements and my privilage to take my eyeballs elsewhere. What really really pisses me off is spywares like Cydoor that installed itself in my machine either without permission or through subterfuge. My browser slowed down quite a bit over the last few weeks. After I ran Ad aware, I discovered Cydoor all over my machine.

The other set of online parasites that bugs the hell out of me are the spammers. Today's Silicon Valley.com has a terrific report on spamming. It was shocking to find out that otherwise respectable organizations have been turning a blind eye to spammers under the guise of affiliate marketing. It was also a revealation that people actually buy stuff through junk e-mailers.

The best quote goes to Scelson, a noted spammer (that sounds so weird!), who is quoted as saying:

``Lots of people say what I do is unethical. What do ethics have to do with it? It's all about the law, what you can and cannot do. People say pornography is unethical, but Playboy has a pretty good business.'' (via GMSV).

I also used to be bugged about idiotic e-mail forwards in my mailbox. Specially the chain mails! Anil Dash has a great rant against e-mail forwards on his weblog. Its a great read. But thankfully I get few forwards these days and mostly through people I know well and who know what I would enjoy reading.

Update: It seems that te spam filters aren't terribly effective either.