I'd like your help with a simple experiment, which will take just a few moments of your time. All I'd like you to do is to pretend that you've never heard of this site and know nothing about it. Now I want you to visit a few pages on the site. Ready?

Let's start by pretending that you received a piece of spam promoting a 'work from home' scheme. Searching for more information leads you to this page. Next, you go to this page, then this one and this one and this one before eventually arriving at this one. What do you do now?

If you answered "I leave, having learned something about spam.", congratulations. You are a person of normal or even superior intelligence. If, on the other hand, you answered "I send you a short message demanding that you take me off your mailing list.", then there is something wrong with either your understanding of the Internet or your reading comprehension. And you might, incidentally, be an AOL customer.

I'm sorry. I don't want to be nasty. I appreciate that these are troubling and confusing times for us all. But can someone please explain to me how any human being smart enough to flip the power switch on a PC can visit seven pages at this site and still retain the idea that sending me a message saying 'take me off your mailing list' will achieve something? I try to make things simple and comprehensible, I really do. But apparently I just can't set the bar low enough for some people and I begin to wonder if it's even worth the effort. If you can read a half-dozen pages on this site and still not have any idea of what it's about, there's really nothing to be done and all the disclaimers and pages of explanation in the world are not going to make a difference.

Take consolation, however, my little friend from AOL. You are not the stupidest person on the Internet. That honor goes to Mr Nelson K. Kadiri, only son of Dr Kadel Diri Kadiri, murdered by rebels in Cote d'Ivoire. Mr Kadiri - who was kind enough to leave his mobile phone number - only visited one page before leaping straight to the contact form and inviting me to assist him in moving a few million dollars of his father's money out of Abidjan. Mr Kadiri, you are this week's Stupidest Person on the Internet. Congratulations, but don't rest on your laurels too long. The way things are going there'll be another one along in a minute and you risk losing your title if you can't crown this week's idiocy with something even more jaw-droppingly foolish. So get to it, and hit us with your best shot. We know you can do it.