Spammer idiocy
 

Rule 3: spammers are stupid. :p

Today I received a PM (on another forum which I haven't visited in years) offering illegal downloads of various movies, most of which are still in UK cinemas (e.g. Avatar, Up In The Air), and which I found mind-boggling because the offer was for "fast HQ downloads". Surely this is a contradiction in terms -- if a video file is large enough to be HQ, there's no way in this world that downloading it is going to be fast...

(And the idiot made the mistake of using a URL redirection service, so (courtesy of me) all his links are now dead...)

Hehe its always good to have the redirect link.. Once it goes down they are back to square 1 :D

The silliest spam I ever received was a random guy claiming to be from Burkina Faso and asking for my bank account details because he wanted to offer me 1000000 € :D You gotta wonder if there are actually people out there stupid enough to believe such mails. I mean, for gods sake, if someone really insists on being a spammer, at least try to make it look like something that could actually be a sincere mail! Some spam is so silly that I doubt any person on this planet would actually take it for a real message...

A few people actually do fall for those "pay a service fee so I can send you a huge pile of money" scams. See this report for 2008 statistics.

Some of these are harder to detect (such as phishing emails which duplicate typical financial emails). And most of us are greedy, and would be very happy to get something for free. They forget that if something is too good to be true, it's fake! If postal mail was cheap and authorities didn't prosecute, the scammers would use snail mail more often for these crimes. The old chain letter was one example which became obsolete after email allowed nearly zero cost and some degree of anonymity.

Bill

True, but do those people never think why someone would give them a million dollars in the first place, especially when this person is a total stranger claiming to be from a far away country? :confused: It is incredible some people fall for that.

Oh well, I use the rule "don't open the mail if you don't know the sender" unless the subject of the email clearly indicates it comes from someone who actually visited my blog and wanted to comment on it.

I've received a spam with the subject "The raisin of a lady's outlook is Cartier necklace". :rolleyes: The dried grape of a lady's Microsoft email client? :confused: Is that supposed to be English?

This is quite common these days. It's random text, with a product name dropped in. You know what they are selling, but it make it harder for spam filters to pick up on it.

I've just received an online-pharmacy spam which (according to the summary -- needless to say, I'm never going to open such rubbish) boasted that the pharmacy in question had been voted "best online pharmacy" by someone! :rolleyes: To my mind, this is like the spammer on here who proclaimed Farcebook to be the best social-networking site, or like someone being proclaimed the best rapper in the biz; there's no merit in being the best of a bad bunch. :p

Just reported one posted here at EMD. Don't see them much... Thank You Mods!

Our biggest banks report about spam that pretend
to be official emails from the Bank Security Department.

For to protect the account holder the Security needs to
set some database to the new security level so they ask
for the personal info that would allow them to log in.

Hopefully none will trust it is for real and in case them
feel unsure make a phone call and ask if they have sent it.

Last time they did it then the Swedish had grammar errors
but this time it looks very "official" with the right logos and
so on.
They sure are at it and learn from mistakes.,

I just received a spam claiming to be from a couple called the Dawes, who allegedly had won the EuroMillions lottery and wanted to spread the wealth around. As is often the case, the email started with "This email is personally directed to you" -- but the "to" was "undisclosed recipients"! :rolleyes: They must reckon thay because they're stupid, so are we...

I always find it quite hilarious that even in the title's of many of these emails how many typos/spelling errors or incorrect grammar is evident. It is sad how many people that aren't aware how corrupt things might actually be and open them and read them and actually believe them, but I have seen documentaries and have read various articles online over the years of the people they are able to con.

Welcome to the EMD Forums, adamM! :)

This is the Off-Topic Lounge (where we discuss any family-friendly topic except for email), but a moderator will probably move your post and replies to a more appropriate forum here at EMD.

The first thing we will need to know is which email system you use and how you use it. For example:

• Which email system do you use? Examples are Gmail, Fastmail, Runbox, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, or webmail through your ISP).
• Do you use an email client (such as Thunderbird or Microsoft Live Mail or Outlook)?
• Do you use webmail exclusively?

If you add the email address of your common contacts (friends, family members, businesses whose email you wish to read, etc.) to your address book, most email systems will whitelist that address. This means that email from that source will not be accidentally treated as spam. This does not reduce your spam, but insures that if you set your spam settings to heavily filter your mail (if this is possible with your email system) then you won't accidentally lose important messages. There may be other suggestions we can add after we know which email system and email client you use.

Bill

There was earlier today posted a reply to a thread about a problem, where the spammer claims to have "solved" it by tweaking a browser setting -- but (1) they don't specify which browser or which setting, and (2) it's clearly a server-side problem anyway, so twiddling the browser settings would have no effect. :rolleyes:

Blatantly obviously then, just a vehicle for the spam sig attached to the post. I hope it's been zapped by now, or will be soon...

When I see spam like this, I immediately report it.

Just wonder what the process is once spam is reported - does it go to each mod or ?

:confused: