Friday thoughts on SPAM
I couldn’t sleep, so was going through my junk folder for false positives - 34.87 megabytes of SPAM since one week ago Friday. Just thinking about that multiplied by everyone on the Internet scares the hell out of me when I think about bandwidth.
So I don’t.
What I do think about though, is this - and tell me if I’m odd…
SPAM that’s spelled incorrectly or has grammatical errors bothers me more than SPAM that doesn’t.
For instance:
"She wants a better sex? All you need’s here."
It hurt me to type that ."a better sex" is incorrect. All you need IS here. You can’t conjoin the words "needs" and "is" with an apostrophe.
Another one that drives me BATTY, is "Our store is your cureall."
Do you know it took me over six months before I figured out that they were not trying to spell Cereal, but rather "CURE ALL"
I imagine some guy in Russia/Kazakhstan/Algeria/wherever who read a book on English and composed from there. Same with the Nigerian scams: "This letter I pray finds you safe with much health." Yeah. "How you doing today, Bob?" "Oh, pretty much health, I pray about you, Jim?"
Insanity. Any others that drive you bonkers? I’m amazed how well, by the way, Panix is doing in not catching false-positives. In over 150 megabytes of SPAM over the last month or six weeks, I’ve found three that it incorrectly tagged - and they were all from a mailing list on Yahoo. (which has since been fixed.)
Does anyone wonder if they didn’t get SPAM at all, how much their email would drop in usage, and whether or not there’d be some kind of psychological implication of all of a sudden not having your Blackberry go off every 45 seconds, but rather, every 10 or 15 minutes or so? Deep down, without really realizing it, would we feel less loved?
Also, has anyone noticed that we’ve simply "adapted" into understanding what a SPAM email looks like just from the sender and subject line put together, and 99.9% of the time, we’re totally right? We adapted to that - almost subconsciously. The same when how when I was seven, and my parents would be introduced to someone, if it ever came up that we went to the same Temple, or that person was invited for a holiday dinner, I’d ask how my parents knew he was Jewish. "Oh, you’ll just know," they said. And eventually, I did. Same thing with SPAM. I don’t know "Joseph S Davis," but I can bet that no one I DO want to know would send me a message that says "PERFECT FOR CHRISTMAS."
I also don’t know Tissue E. Tidings, but I’ve adapted to know that there does not lie a real name, regardless of the subject line. It’s interesting from a human nature/brain standpoint how we’ve managed to figure that out, huh?
Finally, I got a "receive your Sony Playstation 3" SPAM email today. Usual garbage, sign up for seven credit cards, six home loans, etc. My question is - since they’re so hard to get now, what if I did everything and they couldn’t deliver? Could I sue for false advertising?
Finally finally: I must have, several years ago, signed up for something and used the name "SHANK PETER" - Because to this day, a good third of my SPAM is subject lined with that.
Also - I get ads for mortgages in Farmingdale, NY. I’ve never lived there. Just in case you were wondering. And I get a lot of them, too. Yet I’ve still never lived there. I’m sure of it. Of course, a few years ago, I never lived in Florida, either, but that didn’t stop someone from opening up a phone in my name and then going delinquent on it. Oh, happy day, to get THAT letter in the mail - "Hi. We’re suing you over a phone bill you never paid when you lived in Florida." "Um… OK…"
I’ve really got to find a way to knock off this insomnia. It can’t be good to think like this at 5:53 in the morning. Especially since I’ve BEEN thinking like this since around 3:30.
Happy Friday,
-Peter
3 Responses to “Friday thoughts on SPAM”
I couldn’t agree with you more, but what really amazes me about spam is that it must work, at least just a little. If no one bought anything that came via spam, the spammers would stop. The fact that it continues means somewhere, there are people who actually fall for the 1.5% mortgages, the penal enhancers, the Nigerian inheritances, the stock that’s going to take off tomorrow, and the need for Bank of America to confirm their password. Who are these stupid people? Can we find them, sit them down and explain to them how they are making life miserable for the rest of us?
Maybe the legitimate e-tailers should get togther with the ISPs and launch a campaign to educate “the public” about how to detect spam, how to report it, how to filter it and - most of all - how to ignore it.
The ones that really irk me now are the ones with “Hi, it’s ….” in the subject line. I don’t want to hear about your stupid ’stock tips!’
Hilarious, Peter. As a nitpicky grammarian, I am most disturbed by the nonsensical spellings and word placement, like “Just today different” and “skills Explore popular”. My friends are guilty of drunken typing sometimes, but that goes too far. This column made me chortle (yes, chortle!). I hope you get some sleep - I can relate.