BS: Surreal spam

Subject: BS: Surreal spam
From: mandoleer
Date: 27 May 05 - 07:01 PM

When I were a lad, you could tell what spam email was about by the subject line - or at least the general idea of it! Now, they come with rather surreal subjects. Here's a few I just cleared out from the one of my addresses that gets spammed (it's a word with a number - that's why it gets the spam). This address is never given out - I just created it as a test and keep it in reserve - so none of these emails come from any site or person I know.

Re: Metaphorical Caffeine (Bulk)
Re: gudgeon Uni-Guaifen
Re: reservedly Hydrochlorothiazide Oral
Re: biltong Dextrose 25% in Water (D25W)
Semester Turpentine Miscell
brusselsy Topsamola

I fail to see the connection between dried meat and sugared water, but I do like the sound of the Turpentine one, and I like brusselsy. (None were opened, especially as some had attachments.) Anyone else got any good ones? If you don't get spam, just create a new address and call it something like john456 and keep it for the spam....

Subject: RE: BS: Surreal spam
From: GUEST,Sleepless Dad
Date: 27 May 05 - 07:10 PM

It sounds like a list of current rock bands to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Surreal spam
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 May 05 - 10:49 PM

hahha Instead of High Dudgeon, you could call your band 'Low Gudgeon' and confuse everyone.

My old local email address used to get a lot of spam, so much so that AOL blocked users of it. Now it has gone down to less than a fourth of its former volume. The subject lines appear to offer drugs more than anything else. My local now isolates the spam on a separate page so that after taking a cursory look at the subject lines I can delete them all with two clicks.

My second account - at Yahoo- has never gotten any spam.

Neither of my addresses has a number in it.

Subject: RE: BS: Surreal spam
From: mandoleer
Date: 28 May 05 - 05:24 PM

My spam seems to have moved from sex to insurance to drugs. I'm still waiting for the rock'n'roll....

Subject: RE: BS: Surreal spam
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 29 May 05 - 02:01 PM

Good one, Mandoleer!

Subject: RE: BS: Surreal spam
From: Ebbie
Date: 30 May 05 - 03:45 AM

mandoleer, now that I think of it, the same thing is true for me. I am almost entirely offered pills. My question: Who on earth would buy pills from an unknown source over the internet? What are they thinking?

Subject: RE: BS: Surreal spam
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 30 May 05 - 09:07 AM

& why do they offer them to Australian addresses? We already get subsidised medications.

& why do phishers think addresses have accounts with American banks? Furthermore, why did they send an email to me & one of the other Sandras in my office? She was very confused cos she had never received any spam at work before, whereas I used to work in our Contact centre & received a lot. We both wondered why the other Sandras didn't get the same email.

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: Surreal spam
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 30 May 05 - 09:29 AM

Not spam, but on a local Freecycle list I'm on, the subject line was: "WANTED - Chainsaw & Motherboard" which I found to be a fairly surreal combination of requests.

Then again, here in New Hampshuh a chainsaw is considered to be a kitchen utensil . . .

Most of my personal spam goes to my Yahoo account and I've trained Yahoo's spam detector well enough that I now can delete the contents of the bulk mail folder without even looking at it. I get almost no spam (maybe two pieces a week) at my regular email address. But at work I get tons -- most of it for drugs, mortgages, cheap namebrand software or wanting me to correct information on bank or PayPal accounts I don't have. That seems to be the latest variant of the bank info phishing expeditions.

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Surreal spam
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 30 May 05 - 09:41 PM

I read about a proposal some time ago to institute a mandatory delay of a fraction of a second before each email message gets sent out. This wouldn't affect us mortal emailers but would throw a giant monkey wrench into the works for spammers, as instead of being able to send 100,000 messages instantaneously, it would take them several hours to do so. Anybody know if this idea is still in the works?

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: BS: Surreal spam
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 31 May 05 - 02:04 AM

I suspect that idea, great though it is, would be blocked by large companies who depend on Email to contact their employees with vital information , and thus lose thousands of £/$.

My own employer last year converted our payroll from paper to Internet - I can only get my payslip by Email. As my employer also employs over a million people up and down the country, it would be weeks before all the payslips were issued. We already have such a problem with over-subscription to the site that certain users are barred from accessing the site on particular days. Maybe one day we'll have a big enough server!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Surreal spam
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 May 05 - 06:31 PM

Other than the spate of spam hawking Viagra and Cialis (don't need it yet, thank you) and all kinds of other drugs and pharmaceuticals, every week I get a wad of spam telling me that my mortgage loan has been approved. Small problem with this:   Barbara's and my home was paid off totally in 1981, we own our car outright, we pay off our credit card every month, and we are completely and totally debt-free. Waste of bandwidth.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Surreal spam
From: fat B****rd
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 03:42 AM

LOOK ! I don't need Viagra but about the Penis Enlargement....

Subject: RE: BS: Surreal spam
From: A Wandering Minstrel
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 08:23 AM

Just lately I get a lot of boxes of cigars offers, immediately followed by Giving up Smoking, courses. Sorry Guys I quit cold nearly three years ago...

Subject: RE: BS: Surreal spam
From: GUEST, Hamish
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 10:39 AM

I believe the reason for the surreal nature is to try to fool anti-spam software. Originally they'd have Viagra, then Vlagra and V!4gra and automatically generated typos Vaigra, Vagiar... But it seems that some anti-spam works on the basis of the ratio of recognised safe words to dodgy and/or unrecognised words. Obviously words like chainsaw and motherboard are "safe", so it can't be spam, can it?

That's the principle, anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: Surreal spam
From: GUEST,Paul Burke
Date: 02 Jun 05 - 03:55 AM

Why do Koreans think I want to gamble in Korean? But from the number of adverts for viagra and penis enlargement, I KNOW they've got a camera hidden somewhere... I've checked under the desk, in the toilet, in the bedroom... HOW DO THEY KNOW?????