Screwing the Spammers, Kat-style

Like anyone online, my wife gets lots of spam in her e-mail inbox. To counter this, she has started using assumed names when confronted with sites that demand to know her first and last name. Using her legit e-mail address, she borrows liberally from pop culture icons to fill in the forms.

Thus, she began to get spam messages addressed familiarly to "Bob," as in "Dear Bob, want to refinance your house?" "Hey Bob, P r e $ c r i p t i o n s at rock-bottom prices!" and the like. She couldn't, for the life of her, figure out where all the "Bob" messages were coming from.

Until tonight, when the first message in her Inbox read, "Dear Mr. the Builder..."