Saturday, September 8, 2012

From the Spamfiles


Because sometimes they are just too weird not to share.


“Hey! You haven’t written me back!” From “Princess-Fan” at Yahoo.com, or something like that. Let’s leave aside the fact that I would never be friends with someone who emailed me with an address like “princess fan” and focus on the fact that I never wrote to her in the first place. Or, more correctly, itsince the sender was a spambot designed to entice people to chat with “sexy girls” (i.e. more spambots).

“Free V1agra!” It’s either this or an advertisement for a pump for an organ that I don’t have. And always, it’s spelled with a 1 in place of the i, I suppose because just Viagra is already in my blocked words list. V1agra is also in there, but for some reason it doesn’t get caught as much.

“Dear personal friend, it is with great sadness that I am writing to you.” And then something about how I have to send them money. The interesting part of these emails is that while they have few spelling and grammatical errors, they aren’t anywhere near correct, like something that was translated from English to another language and back again. Then through a few more languages before it was sent. Ever had an instruction manual for a Chinese item? Like that.

“You have one 500,000 pounds in the British Lottery!” I know I’ve talked about all the lotteries I win before, but I just keep getting notices, often warning me that this is my “last chance to claim my winnings!” Anyone from the United Kingdom: is your country always having lotteries that foreigners win without entering or should I be suspicious?

“hey! i cant believe what your doing in this pic I found of u!” And then a shortened link. This message pops up in Twitter way too often. They don’t even change the grammar, although sometimes it’s “i can’t believe what this person posted about u!” Come on, spammers. At least change the content. If you’re not going to put the effort in to entice me, there’s no reason for me to click the link that will probably stuff my hard drive so full of viruses it will cough and then forcibly eject itself from my computer, exhaling a cloud of black smoke as it does so.

Anyone have their own spamfile stories to share? We’re listening.

4 comments:

  1. I got that Twitter one. It said something like "someone is posting mean things about you". Yeah, because I'm still 16 and that sort of thing bothers me. But curious, I clicked on the link and it took me to a phishing site trying to look like Twitter. I believe the address was tvvitter so that if you didn't look closely enough...

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    1. That tvvitter I typed is actually t v v i t t e r. Need the spaces to see that it's two v's rather than one w.

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  2. I keep getting one in my spam files from one "Adriana", horrible grammar, attempted flirtation, claiming we used to talk a lot on facebook, posting a VIP link into a cybersex site. Uh huh. Sure, right, and I've got some ocean front property in Saskatchewan if I'd believe that....

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    1. I here the oceanfront property in Saskatchewan is lovely ;)

      Delete

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