It’s Tuesday, which means despite comics to review and chinchillas to draw, it’s time once again to purge the spam filters of all my various email accounts and report anything interesting to you, the humble and unsuspecting reader.
- Number of messages sorted through: 270
- Number of spam messages missed by filters: 12
- Number of real messages marked as spam: 2
Mostly prescription drug offers this week, with a marked return in focus to Viagra offers. Canadian pharmacies seem to dominate the market this week. It doesn’t seem so long ago that most of the drugs were coming from India. Then again, you can often get actual prescription drugs from India, so maybe that’s the confusion. Far fewer fake watch offers (less than 5% of total messages), but a slight up-tick in porn spam (including one offer for Britney Spears videos; does anyone even want to see her naked anymore? is there anyone left online who hasn’t?).
One thing I’m happy to see — a message from one absurdly named “Rene I. Youngblood” containing bizarre cut-and-paste wonderments (e.g. “Patriot Act, sometimes illegally.gas emission levels by the year 2020 by 20% compared toA secretive, mysterious figure for a long time. Soros, by the early 1990s, was pleased to”). I had complained last week at the absence of both phenomena, so it was a joy to get at least one message containing both.
Two messages might have been from actual businesses but didn’t get included in the “wrongfully labeled” stat, as there’s no way I signed up for either list. The ad for the Cuban restaurant in Atlanta was unwanted, to be sure, but was at least plausible in terms of why it was sent to me; I like food, so I can see how I’d get on some weird list about food, even though most of my Atlanta dining experience involves Waffle Houses years and years ago. At least “eating” is something that I do. The other ad? The other ad was for scuba diving with whale sharks off the coast of Burma. I don’t think I’ve even been swimming in the past eight years. Delete, delete.
Just under 10% of the messages this week were various non-medical scams, primarily foreign bank/Nigerian or UK lottery scams. A handful of fake IRS refunds. One lonely fake PayPal email (amusingly sent to an address that doesn’t have a PayPal account). Very little innovation or surprise here.
Probably the most amusing this week is the fake email from the FBI. In this lovely twist on the Nigerian scam, the bait is an email “from” the Federal Bureau saying, essentially, that because of the Patriot Act/nationalized wiretapping, they’ve been monitoring my communications. And they noticed an email from the Central Bank of Nigeria, so they decided to check out the validity of it. And they (the “FBI”) are happy to report that it’s totally legit.
It might interest you to know that we have taken our time in screening through this project as stipulated on our protocol of operation and have finally confirmed that your contract payment is 100% genuine and hitch free from all facets and of which you have the lawful right to claim your fund without any further delay.
The email then goes on to warn against sending money to any other address than the one provided because, you know, there’s a lot of fraud out there, and they haven’t verified any of those other people.
Then again, this might just be part of the economic bail-out plan. Maybe I should save that address, just in case. Thankfully, they sent two copies.
Jones thinks the increased number of Viagra offers has already boosted his sex drive. By the same logic, he also has millions of dollars in his bank account and the largest watch collection known to man.