Comments on: On spam

by: app

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:34:45 +0000

I think what amuses me is the ‘christian’ spam…stuff for christian mortgage, christian dating, bibles, i love jesus t-shirts, etc.

But what I haven’t recieved yet is one for christian penis or breast enlargement. I am still waiting for that.

by: Steven Den Beste

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 02:18:22 +0000

Bad enough to multi-spam with normal messages. But it’s rather stupid to multi-spam when you’re trying to run a 419 scam.

Receiving essentially the same letter from Mr. Jason Taylor, Lawyer, begging for your help — receiving it five times, in slightly varied versions, all addressed to BCC mailing lists, rather defuses the message. (Except that I don’t see them because K9 stops them all. Great program, that one.)

by: Hendo

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:36:57 +0000

Just ran it through altavista - it’s offering a spam mail out service…

by: Hendo

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:33:36 +0000

I had a remarkably honest Subject header the other day:

SPAM#SPAMimSPAMsSPAMsSPAM%SPAM?SPAM’ ‘SPAMsSPAM?

Enough to make me wonder if the product or service was similarly honestly portrayed. Bit hard to tell though:

Ищите хорошую рекламу? Мы к Вашим услугам!
Хотим предложить вам наши услуги рассылок{LET:рекламных сообщений,почтовых сообщений,почты,рекламы} по {LET:отличным,приемлемым,правильным,невысоким} ценам.

Наш прайс-лист:
1 000 000 имайлов на аккаунты сервиса МАЙЛ РУ 10 т. до 12 000 почтовым ящикам рублей

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by: Matt

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:25:15 +0000

Slow day, Dan? I can’t believe you spend so much time looking through your spam.

by: Jax184

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:36:33 +0000

I still say the spammers need to be locked up in jail with a bunch of single, scammed men loaded up on viagra and promises of meeting singles in their area…

Anyway, just a note to those who haven’t seen it already, www.spamusement.com has managed to find what may be the only valid use for spam.

by: Falk

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:07:55 +0000

Three things that drive me mad about spam:
1) It seems to make the spammers rich — otherwise they’d have given up by now
2) There are no current laws to adequately deal with spammers*
3) As with drunk people running down my mailbox, whatever laws are available are militantly not enforced by the law enforcement agencies

*: We’d need to get Amnesty International on-board with the reintroduction of breaking at the wheel. Considering how much misery worldwide this would ameliorate, it mightn’t be too hard…

by: Kiwiri

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 15:35:03 +0000

The funniest three-word-dick-pill subject line I've come across so far is "Wide-rangingBodypartForrest", as I note here. See further spams that have amused me recently, here.

by: Daniel Rutter

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 15:12:04 +0000

Not only would pay-per-message require worldwide cooperation, and be least easy to set up in the countries that already produce the most spam, but it would also make it impossible for most people in poor countries to, say, run a mailing list.

There are numerous other problems with the idea.

To whom would people who run their own mail servers pay the fee? Would e-mail encryption be made illegal? If someone accidentally makes a mail forwarding loop that runs over the weekend and clogs a couple of servers, do the server owners involved each pay $50,000 to each other, or do they both have to pay it to your E-Mail Post Office and then try to get the money out of the person who made the mistake?

Oh, and who pays, and how much, for bounce messages? What about other errors?

I’ve got more, if you’d like… :-)

by: corinoco

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:46:24 +0000

It’s a bit sad to hear our new PM mouthing off about a crusade against P2P, thereby jumping on the same bandwagon as the UK & US (grumble ‘free trade’ grumble), while no government anywhere seems to have the balls to stand up to spam properly. Especially the US; up to recently it’s been mostly them.

Pay-per-mail looks like a good solution - say $0.01 per email (OK, it will have to be $0.02 because of GST!), assuming that’s offset by lowered ISP costs. The problem is it’s like any other international law - everyone has to adhere to it or it won’t work.

Hmm.. standover men does seem like the best option. Or Vogon Poetry. “Oh frettled gruntbuggly, thy micturations are to me…”