What do Ecuador, a parakeet, and oversized graphics have to do with each other?

They all came together in Georgetown University student Josh Zumbrun's inbox, to which the Georgetown senior and chair of the school paper's board of directors cried fowl.

It seems that someone in the school's "study abroad in Quito, Ecuador" program decided that Zumbrun, and who knows how many others, had a need to know.  The fact that Zumbrun had never shown even an inkling of interest was ok  - the spammer just added lots of pretty graphics to pique Zumbrun's interest, including, inexplicably, a photograph of a parakeet.  But it wasn't Zumbrun's interest which was piqued.

Using the power of the press, and, let's face it, a bully pulpit (nothing wrong with that) Zumbrun rips the school's study abroad program a new one after being spammed by them one too many times.   And to add insult to injury, because it was an inside job, they had to know that Georgetown gives its students a measely 20M inbox — and yet sent spam containing several hundred K's worth of graphics.

Zumbrun's account has pathos, but the real lesson learned?  Go to a school which isn't so stingy with server space.