"I see in the comments of your GripeLog site that others have also received spam from third-party spamming companies advertising TaxAct," a reader e-mailed me recently, copying me on such a message he had just received. "It appears to be directly sponsored by TaxAct, but the company that sent it promotes a number of other spammy sites like mortgage deals and magazine subscriptions."

The reader traced how the link in the spam he received was re-directed through a series of URLs to arrive at the TaxAct sign-up page. In the process, it appeared to have been tagged as coming via a "TaxAct Affiliate" partner, which means the spammer would get 50 cents if the visitor downloads TaxAct and 15 percent of any orders.

The reader is certain he had nothing to prompt the spam. "I never ever sign up to receive marketing info from anybody," he wrote. "And I don't even use tax software, so I certainly haven't done any signing up with TaxAct at all. My e-mail address does receive a lot of spam, mostly of the scam variety; it's on a large number of spammers' illicit e-mail lists."

Since he's not the only one with an e-mail address that's on a lot of spam lists, it was easy enough for me to duplicate his experience. Checking my own filtered e-mail, I found several similar spams in the last few weeks advertising TaxAct, each from a different spam house than the ones readers had identified. And each also wound up at the TaxAct sign-up page after apparently crediting the spammer as the TaxAct Affiliate who delivered the hit.

So spamming for TaxAct seems to be a game a lot of sleazebags are playing. Of course, affiliate programs are vulnerable to being abused by spammers, but you have to suspect that 2nd Story could do a much better job of screening its marketing partners. And it certainly could provide a better mechanism for taking complaints about affiliates who spam. If 2nd Story doesn't want to be known by the company it keeps, it had better get its act together.