| |
Oddly enough, the spam/scam entries seem to be my best traffic posts. Not sure what that means to my long-term blogging plans, but for the moment, it suits me well enough. Most of these come through my AOL account (which I don’t actually use for anything by IM anymore - same with Hotmail and Yahoo, BTW). That’s because the ones that get through Gmail’s filters are usually either image mail, which I refuse to unblock enough to see what they are, or vulgar, which I refuse to post.
Anyway, Rosalind recently got the death threat/extortion version, which is disturbing. I don’t know how I would take that, personally; it’s not like I know anyone who hates me that much, but the thought of it is creepy. At least I just keep getting the fraudulent fortune emails.
Read the rest of this entry » Originally published at Chrystalline. You can comment here or there. | | |
|
After my last post, I was bombarded with trackback spam for almost a month before I was able to get rid of the spammer. The admin of the first messageboard I contacted responded with dismay; his board had been hacked and significant content had been deleted. The violation of his website (and the loss of so much content) had him so discouraged, he wasn’t sure he was going to try to restore the board at all. The next few didn’t respond, but the spammer moved from one to the next as I alerted them, so I guess they took action when I notified them of the hacking. Then he moved on to Harvard, of all places, putting trackback spam pages in one of their subdomains. At this point, I was fed up. Six or seven spam messages every day for a month is too much. (I know, the popular blogs probably get hundreds or thousands a day, but I’m not making a living from mine yet.) I did notify the webmaster at Harvard, but I also checked the spammer’s IP address and tracked it back to his ISP. After that, the bombardment finally stopped.
I mention this because it’s up to us, the haters-of-spam, to take action to stop spam. We have to work together to take away any benefit they could get from it and block them wherever possible, whether they’re barging into our email inbox or sending messages through instant messengers or using the comment/messaging systems of your favorite social networking site. I freely acknowledge that I’m not the be-all and end-all of internet wisdom, but I’ve been around for a while, so I’ve got some advice on the subject.
Read the rest of this entry » Originally published at Chrystalline. You can comment here or there. | | |
|
I guess I just always expected that someone who wanted a mail-order bride would be the one to initiate contact, not the other way around…
Read the rest of this entry » Originally published at Chrystalline. You can comment here or there. | | |
|
Again with the British Lottery. Really, now, people, how many times do you think I can win this thing without entering one? This one’s not as much fun; still has bad grammar from supposedly English writers, still two people referenced in the email and a third in the return address, and still asking for my full bio for ID theft ahem, winner verification purposes, but not nearly so much entertaining filler to shoot themselves in the foot. 
Read the rest of this entry » Originally published at Chrystalline. You can comment here or there. | | |
|
Let’s start with the not-so-new, but with a slightly different twist. The Nigerian widow is now a pair of orphans in Ghana. Oddly enough, the 21-year-old needs a guardian to access his late father’s financial accounts at some non-specific “finance company.” Apparently, 18 year olds are “small” and 21 year olds, while old enough to vote, are not old enough to inherit? Let’s note, also, that Ghana is sufficiently linked to the Nigerian scams to have an entry on the subject on its national stats page on Wikipedia. (Interestingly enough, the header info referenced a Hong Kong email address.)
Read the rest of this entry » Originally published at Chrystalline. You can comment here or there. | | |
|
Spammers never quit, it seems, and I boggle. Really, now, one would think I would have to at least buy a ticket in order to win a UK NATIONAL LOTTERY, if not actually live there. They hid the recipients list, so it wouldn’t be quite so obvious that I wasn’t the only “winner,” and at least the hotmail address has a proper .uk suffix. Still, I had to laugh.
Read the rest of this entry » Originally published at Chrystalline. You can comment here or there. | | |
|
Sometimes spam is funny, and sometimes it just makes you wonder. Like this one, which came to the email address I’m using with CJ (the ads I have on my page here - I refuse to make my page unreadable by burying everything in ads, but a few here and there are okay…to be honest, though, I don’t know how long I’ll keep trying those, since they don’t seem to be making me any money) and with one or two other sites. It’s not a widely used email address, so the fact that this email came through it is…odd. I suspected at first that CJ sent it, as they often send messages from new CJ affiliate clients that want me to add their program to my CJ affiliate account, but when CJ does that, they come from CJ’s domain. This didn’t.
Read the rest of this entry » Originally published at Chrystalline. You can comment here or there. | | |
|
Sometimes the scams that show up in my inbox just make me laugh. This is one of them:
|
From: Harith Ahmad
Date: 1/2/2008 10:45:55 PM
To: (someone else’s email address)
Subject: For A Real Investment
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Dear Friend
Please make a hotel reservation for me and tell me the nearest airport to you and await for my arrival.This is a transaction of $11m (eleven million USD) from a genuine source and duly certified.It is my inheritance with full legal right.
I trust that with you I will be able to invest on the right business to maximize profit and grow my money.I am not resident in your country,pls be my partner,receive me well and 20% of the total fund is for you.Trust me.
Regards
Harith Ahmad
479 Valley Road,
Valley Park # 12-04
Singapore.
Note the email - the only address showing was not mine. Such a personal message! And the “trust me” is really the icing on the cake.
Originally published at Chrystalline. You can comment here or there. | | |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}