Spam From President Assad’s Wife!
With all the troubles in Syria, I got this spam yesterday.
I will like to formally introduce myself, I am Mrs. Asma al-Assad, First Lady of Syria which is the wife of Syria President Bashar al Assad.
I have a Profitable business transaction for you which involves transfer of funds,Please if interested do contact me via email for more details on this transaction but if this does not suit your business ethics, kindly delete this e-mail as I will gladly appreciate.
I await your swift response, to my email.
It may have come from Iran.
I will of course not be responding.
A Guerilla Attitude To Junk Mail
I’m developing a guerilla attitude to junk mail, both physical and by e-mail.
1. I never buy anything from a company that sends junk mail. So I won’t deal with Virgin in all most of its forms, as they’re one of the worst offenders.
2. Local taxis who persist in putting cards through my door, get there numbers written down and when I get an annoying phone call on my land line trying to deal with my non-existent PPI, I ask that they ring on my mobile number, which of course is the local minicab. You can play all sorts of games like this.
3. As I have a post box opposite, any junk mail delivered by the postman, goes straight in that box.
4. I think I’ll get a big stamp saying something like. “Elvis says return to sender”
Any other suggestions are welcome.
How To Stop Spam!
A few days ago, someone stared sending masses of spam from a Hotmail account faking them so that it appeared they came from one of my business e-mail addresses. This technique is used to try to get round spam filters. The consequence though, was that I got masses of bounces from mail systems that rejected his junk.
I reported him to abuse@hotmail.com, but all I got was a simple acknowledgement.
Then yesterday I sent the spammer a short e-mail saying.
I have a friend with connections to Mossad and that they have means of stopping spam.
A few hours afterwards and the messages stopped. He could have course just got bored or been chopped by Microsoft.
But who cares! The messages stopped.
The Gambling Spam Keeps Coming
I’m still getting the gambling spam, I reported about here.
I have only been counting since the 19th July, and as of this morning, I’ve received over 680 in a month.
This must rate installation in the Guinness Book of Records.
There is an iunsubscribe link on the e-mails. But it either doesn’t work or Outlook and my anti-spam system, doesn’t allow it to be used. I of course pass the link to my test machine, which means if it gets infected by a virus, I just delete everything.
A Country I’ll Never Visit!
I’ve enjoyed the Czech Republic in the past, but I doubt I’ll be going to the neighbouring country, Slovakia, despite this enticing poster.
A Country I’ll Never Visit!
It’s all because I get around thirty spam messages a day promoting dodgy gambling sites, from a site with connections to the country. Here’s an extract from the domain registration.
fname: Dobran
lname: Sulaj
address: Letaliska 101
city: Kidricevo
pcode: 2325
country: SI
phone: +486-40-167802
email: support@dlypromos.com
Get your act together Slovakia!
The Rise of Gambling Spam
I’ve had the impression for a week or so now, that the amount of spam I’m getting from dodgy gambling sites has been grown somewhat.
On the 1st, to the 7th of August, I’ve received 26, 32, 25, 21, 35, 24 and 29 messages respectively. A few months ago, they were quite rare.
They are ideal practice for using the Delete key on your computer.
I must admit I do like the odd small bet, but then only when I have inside information about the nag involved.
The only thing I do with Spam is occasionally eat it, as I’m a coeliac and it’s gluten-free.
I have now found that most of this spam comes from a website called http://www.promotion-rewards.com,which is registered with a Slovenia address.
A Message From Syria
I just received this message.
Greetings,
I will like to formally introduce myself, I am Mrs. Asma al-Assad, First Lady of Syria which is the wife of Syria President Bashar al Assad.
I have a Profitable business transaction for you which involves transfer of funds,Please if interested do contact me via email for more details on this transaction but if this does not suit your business ethics, kindly delete this e-mail as I will gladly appreciate.
I await your swift response, to my email.
Regards
Mrs. Asma al-Assad
It is the sort of message for which the delete button was invented.
I checked the message source and it came from Indonesia.
One Line Spam E-Mails
I have seen a large increase in the number of one line spam e-mails over the last week or so.
Typically, the e-mail has the following characteristics.
- There is rarely a Subject
- The sender maybe someone you know and the e-mail address is not encoded.
- The e-mail is copied to lots of other people, who often are connected to the sender. I’ve just received one from Australia and it is copied to masses of people in the country.
- The body of the e-mail consists of a single complicated link. Don’t click this, as you’ll get infected with a virus or an advert for a drug you don’t need.
So what should you do if you get such an e-mail?
Ask Leo has the details here. Read it.
He says that the sender’s e-mail account has been hacked, so contact them immediately and get them to run a virus check on their computer and change their password and account recovery questions.
I would also advise, that if they use HOTMAIL, GMAIL, YAHOO or any other free e-mail to move away from that account and get a new account. I know it’s a pain, but they could use your account to send other things that you might not like, as they have your current ID and password.
Read Leo as I said and if you don’t believe me, believe him.
I have had five of these e-mails in the last couple of weeks; two from friends, a couple from Australia and another from who knows where.
The frequency seems to be increasing.
Religious Spam
I just received some rather evangelical religious spam. It’s funny but it is actually quite unusual to get spam like this, although I do get a fair bit through the letter box and see it stuck to the bus stop. But then that tends to be a bit phobic in various ways.
This message was just too long to read, so I deleted it.
I did have brief look at it and sees that it mentions someone called Linda Newkirk from Arkansas. Searching for her on the Internet reveals the sort of things, that give Christianity a bad name in the minds of the well-read believer. But then people like this have always been around to burn Catholics or Protestants at the stake, persecute the Jews, Huguenots, the Muslims, the Hindus and the Sikhs, to name a small selection of those persecuted over the centuries. And I suspect the Homo Sapiens used to persecute the Neandertals before that!
If this mad woman had any faith, she’d be against capital punishment and would proclaim the fact, as it is still legal in Arkansas.
To me anybody, who believes in capital punishment and religion is a complete hypocrite.
Spam in Blogs
Every morning, I empty the spam out of my blog. usually, it’s a dozen or so messages and I’ve commemted about it before.
It seems to have changed since that last comment, in that now a lot seems to be trying to sell me virus protection programs, with a rather verbose script, that only deserves one action; to be trashed.
You’d think people had better things to do with their time.
Especially, as the spam filter used by WordPress seems to be as reliable and accurate as an SAS-trained marksman.
The Anonymous Widower 