Albert Einstein, a man who needs no qualification, once said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Between our e-mail inboxes and what we read on blogs and the comments left in them, spammers are behaving as if they are clinically insane. There are a number of product and service websites who offer what can only charitably be referred to as affiliate programs, whereby people can sign up and are offered a percentage of every sale generated through their link.

Legitimate companies and industrious individuals would then add that affiliate link to an existing website that provides something of value to the reader visiting the website. That's because there is a certain amount of empathy for the person who looks at their website.

The fly-by-night spammer has no interest in going legit and relies on throwaway blog sites and the comment sections of existing legitimate websites as the sole means of getting the affiliate link out there. With reckless disregard for the person or company who spent time putting the website together, sort of like the gangbanger who uses spray paint to mark up property of others or the dog who pees wherever he senses another dog's smell, the spammer will post his or her affiliate links everywhere they can be posted.

This is where the insanity enters the equation. Some websites require a membership sign-up before posting. The spammers will sign up, completely ignore the rules of the website and terms of service (TOS), and proceed to spam anywhere and everywhere. If the membership is deleted for violation of the TOS, the spammer will just sign up again under a new account and spam again. This cycle can go on indefinitely.

A sane person would take the hint after the first or second time and move operations to another location. The clinically insane person keeps repeating the cycle of signing up, spamming, being deleted, signing up, spamming, being deleted, and so on. As a result, it takes incredible patience to want to be a website owner or moderator of a website to deal with these spammers who view the Internet as their personal toilet.

The nice thing for those of us who must suffer them is that many websites today have flag functions so we can flag the byproducts of insane minds so there is little chance for the spamming to be profitable.

If you see spam, I encourage you to flag it no matter where you see it (as defined by the site's TOS, mind you). If you are a habitual spammer, I encourage you to post where people like me will not see it because I will flag it.