One of the most trumpeted merits of the Internet is that it has the power to turn anyone into a publisher. The flipside of this is that it also has the power to turn anyone into a spammer. Yet amateur spammers — 'spamateurs', for want of a better word — are surprisingly rare. You see the occasional piece of affiliate spam with a homemade look, but the majority of affiliate or syndicated network marketing abuse is well-organized, large-scale activity, involving rented servers at colocation facilities, not one guy sitting at home with a PC. The loose network of providers sending out spam on behalf of "Canadian Health Care" are clearly at least semi-pro. A few persistent spammers seem to be one-man operations - what anti-spammers used to refer to derisively as "chickenboners" - but the real home spammer, the person who sits down at their PC and says "Today I'll make some money from spam" seems to be a rarity.

So I'd like to introduce you to an individual who we'll call Gary or, to give him what might be his full name, Gary J. Mcneish. There's no way of knowing if that's his real name, but he (or she) seems to use the Gmail address 'garyjmcneish'.

Gary first showed up on our radar screens with some messages promoting a band from Manchester (I won't name the band: they may have been innocent victims of Gary's enthusiasm for their sound, or of his need for a test run). The messages, which were sent to several of our spamtrap addresses, contained a link to the band's YouTube page and the message:

This is a band from Manchester. Give it a play whilst you do your work. Come on give them a listen.

The From line of the message gave a Gmail address, 'garyjmcneish'.

So far, not so interesting. But the next day produced another flurry of messages, this time signed just 'Gary', sent from the same broadband host at UK provider Virgin Media. These ones also pointed to a YouTube page, but this time it was about getting 'free electricity'. The description began:

Free electricity. From waste heat or cold. Interested? Email: garyjmcneish@gmail.com.

There's that address again. This time, the address is actually needed to 'service' the spam, so it's reasonable to assume that whoever the spammer is, that address is connected to him.

Then more messages arrived from "Gary", still posting from the same Virgin Media host. These ones had the subject "Car Finance", and touted affiliate links at carfinance247.co.uk and webgains.com. The next day, more "Car Finance" spam. Gary was obviously getting into his stride.

Searching Google for Gary's email address turns up an interesting mix of pages. He seems to have posted an advert on UK website 'getthatjob.net' with an "Easy, Profitable Opportunity to Earn £1000's Every Week From Home" (apparently a pitch for an 'email-processing' scam). That same ad, still with his address attached, appears on another web page. He's very interested in alternative energy (that 'free electricity' thing again). And it looks as if he's also pitching those 'HHO' devices that are supposed to miraculously save fuel by extracting hydrogen from water using your car's battery. It looks like Gary has never met a scam he doesn't like.

The real challenge for the amateur spammer is that you have to have something to sell. That need is met by affiliate schemes, whether they're theoretically respectable (like the TxtLoan and CarFinance247 offers that Gary is pushing), or downright deceptive, like the 'email-processing' and HHO scams. Schemes where companies pay for links to their site, either from directly signed-up affiliates or through a syndicated marketing program, are a fertile breeding ground for spam and while Gary may be ahead of the curve, I suspect we'll see more like him.

Of course, the other challenge for amateur spammers is to avoid getting disconnected by their ISP, and I'm hoping that Gary will be having just a little difficulty with that over the next few days.