Taunting Spam XII

I must admit, at Message Partners, we have gotten very successful at stopping spam cold. Is it because of the taunting, you might wonder? I can't say, but all I know for sure is that it sure is fun.

So I received the following spam:

Subject: �G���h���XSEX���������m�������������I�o�T���������v������

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���T�C�g��20���`50�����������W�������������l���E�n��
���W�������{�������s���R�~���j�e�B�[�T�C�g�����B
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�s�����p�����������������t-------------------------------

�T�@�����p���j�������s�������]�����������������������������B

Taunt begins:

�������NO���������THANK�����������YOU���������?������

�I�������������PREFER���������MY���������WOMAN������

���������NOT���������TO���������HAVE������������������

���SO���������MANY���������DAMN���������QUESTIONS���������

Taunting Spam XI

At Message Partners, we take the fight against spam and phishing to the next level: we taunt it again and again and again. But, truth be told, spam doesn't really seem to care, so maybe we just do it for ourselves. But that's OK too.

I received the following spam:

Subject: VERY VERY URGENT

DEAR KHUN
PLEASE HANDLE IT' SECRET
MY NAME IS MRS.NOI TAKSIN SHINAWATRA THE WIFE OF FORMER PRIME MINISTER OF THAILAND.WHO HAVE JUST BIENG OVERTHROWN ON POWER BY THE THAILAND MILITARY GOVERNMENT ON THE [19TH OF SEPTEMBER 2006.] RIGHT NOW WE ARE ON EXILE CURRENTLY IN LONDON, WITH MY HUSBAND. I AM CONTACTING YOU TO ASSIST ME FOR SECURING AND INVEST. I' HAVE THIS HUG OF MONEY IN MY CUSTODY WHICH I WANT YOU TO INVEST IT' FORME WITHOUT MY HUSBAND CONCERNCE WITH A TOTAL SUM OF [USD$21,000.000] [TWENTY ONE MILLION DOLLARS]. SECONDLY AS A POTENTIALOF YOUR COUNTRY,WHICH GUARRANTEES US GOOD RETURNS AND HUMAN SECURITY AS A RESULT OF THE SOURCE OF THE FUND,I HEREBY BELIEVING THAT YOUR ASSISTANCE WILL BE PROFITABLE TO BOTH OF US.I WILL APPRECIATE YOUR WILLINESS TO CARRY OUT THIS TRANSATIONS THE GRATIFICATION REMARK I DETERMINDED AS I SOON AS I HEAR FROM YOU.I HAVE MAPED OUT 10%,FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE AND THAT MIGHT ARISE ON THE PROCESS OF SAFEGUIDIND ME AND THE MONEYWITH OUT EXPOSING ME I WAITE FOR YOUR
URGENT REPLY. SO THAT I CAN UP-DATE YOU WITH INFORMATION AND FEEL FREE TO ASK IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTION CONTACT ME ON MY PRIVATE MAIL

YOURS SINCERELY

Taunt begins: Wow. There is just so much wrong with your letter, I simply don't know where my taunt should begin. Let me just say, though, the very very urgent really got my attention. Had it just been very urgent, well, that's just not enough. In terms of spam inflation, very very is just the minimum amount of urgency.

So you have a "hug" of money. I keep look over the statement, trying to see what might have been misspelled, but I can't think of it. If you meant to say "huge," then you would have wanted to have written huge amount of money. So I think you mean hug of money. Does that mean you have the money in a teddy-bear, which you hug when you go to sleep? Hug if I know.

And why does spam always insist on secrecy? Is that something they teach you at spam-college in Nigeria? Well I think Spam U should change their curriculum myself. And damn, tell them to reintroduce spelling. And grammar. But then again, if you knew that, you'd have the skills to get a real job, so I guess if you're really going to be the King of Spam you have to be something of an Idiot Spamvante.

Ha. Made myself laugh there. That'll do, spam. Now go back to your cave.

MPP for ISP

Was at a big meeting with some folks that run a service provider, and we were going over their architecture, and the question came up, as it almost always does, why in the world should we go with MPP?

You see, while they had solved some of the most intractable problems facing an ISP in terms of email, with the main one being -- while people truly hate spam, just let one customer miss one email they were supposed to get (what we call a false positive), and you won't ever hear the end of it. Well, they had pretty much solved this problem cold.

But now, due to their popularity, new problems were arising. One, which I won't get into much, is scalability. Now that they had so many customers, they needed scalability, which we had in spades.

The other, and more insolvable problem for them, was the demand for -- as more and more people use email, and use it for different reasons -- their customers were demanding more flexibility from their email, choices that influenced both cost and usability. And anyone that studies the evolution of a product knows that, as a product travels along its life cycle, it tends to evolve from a simple product with little choice into a much more complex multiple-choice product.

Henry Ford himself said, "You can have any color car you want, as long as you want black." That was in the era of the Model T, when just having a car was enough. Well just the other day I saw a car colored in a color I never even knew existed, and all I can say was it was a cross between purple and fucsia (not exactly sure about the spelling of the last one).

The point being, this ISP's customers were starting to ask for different email choices, like archival, and different spam settings, and while their old email engine couldn't do that, they wondered if MPP could help with that?

Bingo, I thought. At long last, after years spent developing a product powerful enough to do exactly that, someone had finally asked us, Can it enable different settings for different users? Damn right it can.

Did Message Partners get the contract? You betcha!