Cobwebs Of The Mind: Spam, Junk Mail and All That Wonderful Stuff

Spam - You just got to love it. At first it was a nuisance, then it became a royal pain in the ***. Then it became uncontrollable, and I had to close out an email account for it. I was getting 300+ email messages a day telling me how to grow my male organ, or enlarge my breasts, or where the best porn can be found on the Internet. Then came the stock tips. Then came the health and drugs. And on and on and on it went.

I got to wondering. Who the hell wastes their time creating this stupid spam crap and who the hell actually clicks on it or reads it. But when a spammer attacked one of my free sites, and was caught after the fifth email to one of the members due to a routine I put in the code, I decided to have some fun. So I wrote them back, and said, I am not going to ban you from my site. If you are stupid and dumb enough to waste your time putting this junk one by one, in over 1000 email boxes you deserve to be given the Idiot of the Year Award. Go right ahead. Do it. Not one person will answer you." Know what happened? The person never returned!

Spam is beginning to piss me off big time. I use Gmail now and they are pretty good at catching the junk. What pisses me off, is that because of this incredibly amount of spam, I still have to quickly review the list of emails in my spam box to make sure something legitimate did not end up there. Spammers are wasting my time and that makes me mad as hell.

But they are getting real sophisticated to. Take a look at the email below. It is professional (except they spelled Australia wrong! can you dig it? Stupid spammers can't use a spell check program!) It is smart and they went to great lengths to make it sound real on the up and up. Addresses email accounts and phone numbers. Now the ploy is, you write some stupid account, they tell you in order to proceed you have to pay them some money, just to prove it is you, and when the sucker pays it they disappear from the face of the earth. I can actually see some poor people not aware of these scams going for this. So I could not resist of course. I followed their instructions. Of course, Felicia Lanza.(Lottery Coordinator) and her email address is phony. But they are going to get some suckers to pay them money. They should be found, tarred, feathered, arrested and put away for a long time.

So Spam definitely and of course gets a thumbs down

But now let us take a look at how sophisticated they are getting:

This is a copy of the letter mailed to one of my email addresses from my Wiki JewishPedia site.

East-West Australia Lotteries,
1022 Kingsway Ave., Osborne,
Western Australia, 6018.
Head office: Maliebaan 38-40, 3581CR,
Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Dear Sir/Madam,

YOU WON: 1,000,000.00!euros
With outmost joy, we are pleased to inform you of the result of the East-West Australia Lotteries International programs held on the 20th of June 2006 drew cash Prize of 1,000,000.00. Your e-mail address attached to Code number XXXXXX with claim Number XXXXXX drew these lucky numbers XXXXXXX, which consequently won in the 2nd category. You have been approved to receive a cash prize of 1,000,000.00 (One Million Euros).
Be advised that due to incessant mix up in cash prize transfer to previous winners, we advise that you Keep your winning information confidential until your claims is been processed and your funds (1,000,000.00)Transferred to you. This security measure is important; its protocol meant to avoid double claims, transfer and unwarranted abuse of this program by other participants.
METHOD OF SELECTING WINNERS:
Participants were selected anonymously through a private ballot system (computer ballot) from over 35,000 Companies and 70,000 individual e-mail addresses all over the world. At the final draw your e-mail address Emerged as the winner of our last jackpot.This is promotional program takes place bi-annually, and it is promoted and sponsored Orient software Corporation (Orient Networks). It is met to reward some individuals and corporations who have devote Their time and resources surfing the world wide web (www) with their email addresses. Remember, all winning must be claimed not later than 5 working days from today. After the expiration of that time frame, if your funds are unclaimed, it will be refunded to us and included in our next draws.We hope you will use part of your cash prize to participate in our next ?18million draws in November 2006. Lastly, in order to avoid unnecessary delays/complications with the transfer of your funds to you, please Always remember to quote your Code number in all correspondence with our paying bank (Deutsche Bank-Amsterdam). Furthermore, should there be any change of your present address, please notify us Immediately so to make the appropriate adjustment.

Congratulations from the management and staffs of East-West Australia Lotteries.

Kindly, immediately, contact our Paying Bank (Deutsche Bank-Amsterdam) for your payment advice.
Send them following e-mail:
I?????(your names)??.., with e-mail address???..(your e-mail address)?.., contact address???..(postal address)??.and code number:???.(quote your code number)??.is the winner of the last East-West Astralia lotteries draws, with a cash prize of ?1,000,000.00. Kindly advise me with details of the process of the transfer of my cash prize.

Contact details of our Paying Bank:
Contact person: Mr. Richard Glass.
Department of Private Banking,
Deutsche Bank, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
E-mail: srvcscust@netscape.net
Tel: 31 647-494-395
Fax 31-84-752-0508
Congratulations.
Yours in services,
Felicia Lanza.(Lottery Coordinator)
Note: Participants below 21 years are automatically disqualified.
All e-mail transmission/correspondence are 100% protected by our Secure Socket Layer (SSL) server.

So all in all we should put a big on spam, and remember - Don't open it, don't read it, and anyone who sends this useless crap out over the net should be badgered, haunted and especially in this case, arrested, forthwith.

For all the dorks, idiots and ***holes that spend their time writing and sending out this junk, and making me waste my time, I truly hope one day a law is passed to arrest you guys.

Tags: technology, blogging, web site creation, content, writing, books, Search Engines, SEO, site rank, SEO, spam, page rank
Categories: technology, internet, Basics of Blogging Series
Spam, Junk Mail and All That Wonderful Stuff - BLAH to Spam