Taunting Spam VII

You know, usually I do the Taunting Spam on Mondays, but instead, I wrote something else, but then, at Message Partners, I noticed a definite uptick in spam the past couple of days, which means Taunting Spam certainly must be working in the battle against these mindless e-hucksters. As I'm sure you are all aware, only the most powerful forces in the Universe can stand up to terrible taunting I unrelentingly deliver in this blog.

So I received the following spam email:

WINNING NOTIFICATION FROM TOYOTA PROMOTION. -[Sat, 17 Feb 2007 00:50:24 +0000]

TOYOTA INTERNATIONAL LOTTO (HEADQUATER)
Customer Service Department Affiliate of Toyota Japan
#28 Kanashiwa road Tokyo JP

We are pleased to inform you of the announcement made today, You are among the winners of the TOYOTA CAR INTERNATIONAL PROMOTION PROGRAM

You have therefore been approved for the payment of the sum of US$500,000,00 in cash, including a Toyota car which is the winning present /amount for the Second category winners. This is from the total prize money of US$2,650,000.00 shared among the international winners in the Second category. CONGRATULATIONS!

To begin your claim, please call your claim agent below or send email immediately.

DR.WILLIAM BANDA
EMAIL: willyban_da@yahoo.co.uk


Taunt Begins:

Oh my. You know, I wasn't born yesterday, Dr. William Banda (where'd you get your medical degree, some online degree-mill?), but I can see right through this oh-so-obvious scam.

I am onto your clever wording ways, Dr. Banda. I can see right through where you write "payment of the sum of US$500,000 in cash." (I'll neglect to mention the strange ",00" or the UK email address, or all the other things wrong with your ridiculous email for taunting's sake.) I know when you say I've won a sum of 500 grand, that that really means, when I send you all my info, and fly out to Toyota-land, you'll present me with a shiny new quarter and say, Here you go, here's some of 500 grand.

But what about the Toyota? Well that's the oldest trick in the book. After I pocked the shiny quarter, the drum-roll will start, 2 beautiful models will step out on the stage and wave their hands around, and the silver curtain will slowly drop to reveal...a Toy Yoda.

Yep, I'm on to you, Doctor Banda. But one thing, though, I've had this ache in my knee, you think you could take a look at it?

More: Spam in the Movies

Was working last night, doing some last minute stuff for Message Partners before I go off on some business traveling later this week, and while I was working I had the Oscars on.

Which made me think I ought to do another Spam in the Movies entry:

Spam by Me
Spamma, Spamma, Spamma
White Men Can't Jump (unless they buy these new jumping pills)
Dr. Strangelove (sounds like pure spam already)
Spam Like it Hot
Spammie Does Dallas
Spammie Hall
Miracle on 34th St. (which you can have too if you just click here)
Spam Pam
S for Spammetta
2007: A Spam Odyssey
To Have and Have Not (click here and be a Have)

Last and pretty much least...

Butch Cassidy and the SpamDance Kid.

Future Spam

At Message Partners, we fight the good fight to keep email safe and efficient for everyone. Lately, much of our work entails fighting spam, and when you spend a lot of time in hand-to-hand combat with spam, you develop something of a relationship with it. In the end, it's not that I like thinking about spam, it's more like I'm obsessed with it.

What follows are what I think spam is going to look like in the not so distant future...

To: You
Subject: Make it smaller
Have you taken too many enhancement pills, and now you need a third trouser leg sewn into your pants. These pills guarantee to make it smaller and more manageable.

To: FutureYou
Subject: Robot Reboot Camp
Has your personal robot gotten a less attentive? When you ask it to bring your slippers, does it sometimes take too long, or instead bring you the wrong pair. At robot reboot camp, your robot will get up-to-the-second training on taking the utmost care of their master.

To: You
Subject: Time Travel HPS
Now that time travel is as easy as microwaving last-nights lasagna, traveling all over history can get awfully confusing. But with HPS, or History Positioning System, whatever time or place you choose to be in, the HPS will tell you what year it is, what time it is, who all the various world leaders are, what major conflicts are being fought, the price of some major stock indexes, in effect all the information you need to truly excel at time travel.

That's all I can think of today, but I assure you, I'll dream up some more soon. Have yourself a great and spam-free weekend.

Taunting Spam VI

As things shift to and fro in the great spam battle, I can only think that the work I do for Message Partners, the number one spam blocker for ISPs, and this blog, and the taunting of spam, is a big contributor.

So I received the following spam in my inbox.

To: Me
From: kristina@bestladies4u.com

Lets start new relations!

I am kristina. I am from Saint-Petersburg, Russia. I am young cheerful
creative lady who wants to make happy not only myself but all people
who are around me - my friends and my family. Will you join my circle?
I will be waiting for you reply to: kristina@bestladies4u.com

Begin Taunt:

Hey Kristina, what's going on? So, by your email address, you call yourself best ladies for you. You know who used to use that style of writing quite often: Prince. Back before the internet, and it became common, Prince always wrote 4 instead of for, which makes me think maybe you should call yourself the best girl for Prince.

St. Petersburg...did you know my name is Peter? Which makes me wonder, if my name was Jeeves, would you be from St. Jeevesburg. You see, that's what spam does to a person, it makes them doubt everything.

And you say you are a young cheerful creative lady who wants to make happy not only myself but all people who are around me. I've met a few like you, and the problem is, when they're happy, they make everyone happy, but when they've sad, or mad, or just plain peevish, they have to make sure everyone around them is in a bad mood.

So you know what Kristina, I don't think I want to join your circle, your square, and especially your botnet.

Spam Throughout History

Fighting spam has become such a major part of my life nowadays that I almost can't imagine life without it. And the way spam is shifting and changing and evolving, I simply cannot imagine a future without spam.

With that in mind, I thought, what would be our past with spam...I mean, as we head into President's Day, what would it be like if some of our most historical Presidents got spam.

The first one was contributed by my boss at Message Partners, Mike Katz, who I just have to say, truly is the mastermind behind our rocking-ass email platform that he pretty much conceived and built from scratch and that service providers are starting to realize that, yes, they really do need something this advanced and powerful.

So here it is, Presidential Spam:

--------------------------------------------
To: PresidentGeorgeWashington@RevolutionaryAmerica.com
Subject: Last The Whole Revolution

Yo Pres. Don't be a minuteman, click here and order so you can rock the White House.

--------------------------------------------
To: AbrahamLincoln@WhiteHouse.com
Subject: Don't be a slave to low-funds

I know you are President of your country, but I was once the King of a small European country that you've probably never heard of. And I have a large fortune that, if only you can send me 5 thousand dollars so I can access it, we will split it. Honest, Abe.

Well, that's it for now. Hope you all have a splendid three-day Presidential holiday.

Spam in the Movies

At Message Partners, our MPP email security solution is doing so well at beating back the zombie horde of spam, that yesterday we had time to sit around and think up movie titles for the era of spam.

So here they go:

A Fistful of Spam
The Spamfather
Spamfellow
Spam Wars: Episode V: MPP Strikes Back (sorry, just had to throw in a plug)
The Usual Spammers
Spamalittle
The Silence of Unopened Spam
The Third Spam
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (which will be all yours if you send us money)
Spamming Private Ryan
Singing in the Spam
Some Like It Hot (click here if you want to last all night long)
2001: A Spam Odyssey
Spamadeus

and finally...

Cool Spam Luke

All right, that's enough of that.

Taunting Email

At Message Partners, one of the top ISP email security solutions, we use everything in our arsenal to beat back spam and keep it out of your inbox. We use pre and post-queue filtering, we use pattern matching, we even use taunting. Yes, that's right, we taunt spam; just in case spam one day gets its feelings hurt and decides to leave us all alone.

I received the following message:

GOOGLE EMAIL LOTTERY INTERNATIONAL
WORLD INTERNET LOTTO CENTRE
EASTERN AVE 6528
INTERNATIONAL PROMOTION / PRIZE AWARD DEPT.
PROMOTING INTERNET USAGE OVER THE GLOBE
( WE ENCOURAGE GLOBALIZATION)

Dear Winner,

Congratulations to you as we bring to your notice the result of GOOGLE LOTTERY 2007 promotion. We are happy to inform you that your email address have emerged a winner of One Million (1,000,000.00) Euros. Your fund is now deposited with the paying Bank. In your best interest to avoid mix up of numbers and names of any kind, we request that you keep the entire details of your award strictly from public notice until the process of transferring your claims has been completed, and your funds remitted to your account. This is part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming or unscrupulous acts by participants / non participants of this program.

NOTE: to file for your claim, please contact the claim department below on email.
***********************************************
Mr. George Paniou.
Trust Claims Agency
Address:Thinos 73, 10722 Athens Greece.
Tel.:+30-694-092-9118
Email :trustclaim@aim.com
**********************************************

Begin taunt:

Wow, George, so I've won another lottery. You must know, as you claim to be Google, that I get a lot of lottery notices that turn out to be not so true. I mean, if I had a nickel for every email that told me I was a lottery winner, I'd have more money than a lottery winner.

But I digress, as I'm a lottery winner, and I should be clearly leaping about in ecstasy at winning 1 million Euros. Wait, why Euros? I thought Google was a good-old American company. I mean, Europe is nice, and it gave us civilization, but wouldn't Google want to maximize the local goodwill by having a local million dollar lottery? I mean, the kind of money they have, they could probably afford a Billion dollar lottery.

And then you tell me that although I've won, I'd better keep it quiet. Wow, so that's one of the super-secret lotteries. And here I thought a company lottery would be to get attention, to get press, but no, this one's a secret. That's one funny lottery, George.

Then there's the clincher, George. You tell me it's the Google lottery, but then your reply email address has nothing to do with Google. Come on, George, if you're going to be a decent cyber-criminal, at least learn to load the gun and fill-up the getaway car.

It's not like I was born yesterday. As a matter of fact, I just got an email that tells me if I buy these pills I can be born yesterday. I have to go, George.

Don't Get Hooked by Phishing

In the past couple of weeks, as I check the spam trap we've set up at Message Partners, which is a fake email address that only gets spam, which, because it only gets spam, we can take it, analyze it, and use it as a basis for content analysis to start rejecting other emails outright to legitimate email addresses (which, when used with Postfix, we can now do pre-queue, so the bad email is never even allowed onto the mail server).

So I was looking through our spam trap this morning, and I just could not believe the number of phishing emails. And their new, not so ingenious trick is to warn you that your account has been hijacked and you better respond QUICK.

That's like getting robbed, the cops come and take you away to safety, only to reveal that they also want to rob you (which actually happened to a friend of mine in Brazil). So they scare you, hoping you let your defenses down, click on their link, and they do exactly what they warned had already been done to you.

Let me repeat: never ever NEVER respond to an email requesting account information. If you believe you might be having some trouble with a bank or ecommerce sight, simply log directly onto those sites.

For me, phishing is just an annoyance, but for others, some have lost just about everything.

Taunting Spam V

Well, another week has gone by, and what do you know, I got more spam. My company, Message Partners, has stopped too many spam mails to count, but I've selected the following one to taunt.

Here's the spam I received:

Walter Edwards
to me

show details
12:02 pm (44 minutes ago)

OEM software - pay for software only and save 75-90%!

Christmas discounts! Special New Year offers!
List of following email prices follow...

Begin taunt:

Walter Walter Walter. You are one of us, you obviously sell software, so you must know what's going on out there in the trenches. You kill one spam, fifty take it's place. And sure, they're mostly innocuous, but haven't you been following the latest news, Walter? What comes in with spam also includes phishing, and phishing is all bad. It's tricky, it's deceptive, and people lose a lot of money from it.

So enough of the emotional taunt, what's up with saying Christmas discounts. New Year offers. What is up with that? Where do you get your spam printed, Walter? What sort of lead time do you have to give them?

Oh, that's right, spam isn't printed, it's just crap repeated over and over again in a storm of email. So haven't you noticed it's February Walter!!! What gives, bro, can't you just change a couple of lines, maybe have a Valentine Software special. Timeliness, Walter, advertising depends on timeliness.

But you're beeper probably just sent off, and you have to go to a pay phone and see who it is and what it's about. Later, Walter, and I don't need any of your software, but do you need some of mine? It does a real good job of keeping out spam, spam just like yours, in fact.

Groundhog Spam Day

Well, once again, it's Groundhog Spam Day, where, somewhere in Pennsylvania, my antispam company, Message Partners, set up an email account and, on this day, on this morning, checked to see if they've got any spam about Groundhogs.

And so it seems the account did get some groundhog spam, or, more specifically, the spam said, Would your groundhog like to be a better lover and be able to last all winter long.

You know what that means? Another year of spam, so you better keep your antispam engines updated, because spam ain't going away anytime soon.