5/13/2006 - Spammity spam

You know what spam I'm getting frequently these days?

"I found your profile on the web recently so I decided to e-mail you to get to know you better.  I will be coming to your country soon…"

Thanks.  I'll alert the National Guard.  The thing that gets me about these spams. 

And the "African Financial" spams. 
And the cheaper drug spams. 

Is that it is almost beyond belief that the authors even expect to get hits.  I am led to understand that every so occasionally someone hands their financial information when asked to do so, but I just can't believe it.

As much as I hate to say it, I almost have more respect for the spams that make an effort.  Oh?  My company's technical support department is alerting me to a security threat?  No, it's coming from an outside e-mail address.  You almost got me.  Now that I can disrespect less.

I used to get more artistic spams.  My e-mail system provides a brief snippet of each e-mail before I open it.  If the e-mail only consists of HTML, I will see nothing in the snippet, but some HTML e-mails include a brief note letting me know what the spam is about, just in case my e-mail application can't handle HTML.  And some HTML e-mails contain a brief note that isn't remotely related to the subject of the e-mail.  For example, I used get bits of Shakespeare soliloquies, e-mailed to my very own inbox.  But my favorite was the spam that included an excerpt from St. Augustine's Confessions in Latin.

In the interest of full disclosure, the only Latin I know is "sempre ubi sub ubi" and I failed to get through "Confessions" in English when it was assigned in college.  But happily, I have Google.  Without opening the e-mail, I typed a few words into Google and quickly discovered what I was reading.

Of course, my favorite sub-HTML note may have been the one that said: "Get a better e-mail application."  My heavens.  I'm sorry for causing you inconvenience, Mr. Spammer.

12,500 slithering steps today.  Cheers,