Glossary - Whack-a-mole

A hand-eye coordination game with an emphasis on timing that was popular at carnivals and amusement parks in the 1970s and 1980s.  In this game the player holds a wooden mallet, and enjoys trying to hit (or "whack") all the moles that pop up randomly from within an assortment of small circular holes in the game board.

Spam fighters sometimes feel like they're playing whack-a-mole when fighting spam because many spammers are known to continue spamming from a different ISP after their account gets terminated for spam abuse.  Spammers repeat this process of signing up for yet another ISP until their spam run is complete (and then they do it all over again for the next spam run).

This can be a frustrating aspect of spam fighting because, in addition to the victimization of eMail recipients, ISPs end up wasting precious time and resources on a spammer who knows that it's a matter of "when" rather than "if" their account will be terminated for spam abuse yet again.

See also

• eMail fatigue
• Spam (eMail)
• The Rules of Spam

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