I haven’t noticed any change yet in the volume of incoming email, but authorities say they have shuttered one of the world’s largest spam operations. They say it was responsible for sending out billions of emails in recent years urging recipients to click on links to sites with false health claims.

The sites, including one called “Canadian Healthcare,” were difficult to distinguish from legitimate online pharmacies — making the pitches more persuasive, said Steve Baker, the FTC’s Midwest Region director.

“These sites are really professionally constructed,” he said. “Some years ago you used to be able to tell the bogus things because they looked cheesy and had misspellings. Anymore, I don’t think that’s true.”

The operation, known as Affking, has ties to the United States, New Zealand, China, India and the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

And as long as we are on the subject of spam, check out this article at PC World. It looks at some of history’s top spammers. What they did, which ones did time in prison, etc.