Of all the things being away from the game for a good while and going back to retail I am being hounded by the "buy my wow gold" spammers. What is going on here and why does WOW not control this crap better?

Ignore them. Blizzard catches up with them, they go away and then they find another way to come back again.

Close your scrolling text browser or even better, set your chat pane to ask for a password from anyone wanting to whisper to you

I get World of Warcraft spam and I don't even play the stupid game so don't feel bad. I tend to wonder what mail list these people are buying because they are so getting ripped off.

I think gline might have meant in-game spam, where you're playing happily one minute and then being pestered by a brand new character who is trying to sell you gold services or levelling services.