Daft spam in my hostbox. This one was from the IRS!
Submitted by Dabitch on Sun, 03/02/2008 - 13:26.
Does anyone really fall for spam like this?
Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 02:58:22 +0100
From: Internal Revenue Service
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
Subject: Notification of Tax Refund on your VISA or MasterCard Now
[ The following text is in the "Windows-1251" character set. ]
[ Your display is set for the "ISO-8859-1" character set. ]
[ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ]
[spacer.gif] Notification of Tax Refund on your VISA or MasterCard Now,
After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $99.23. A refund can be delayed
for a variety of reasons.
Fox example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline.
Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience.
To access the form for your tax refund please copy/paste the link below in your browser (or click the link below)
http://www.IRS.gov/refunds.php
Note: For security reasons, we will record your ip-address, the date and time.
Deliberate wrong inputs are criminally pursued and indicated.
Regards,
Internal Revenue Service
© Copyright 2007, Internal Revenue Service U.S.A.
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That link only looks like it goes to the IRS, instead it goes to www.mustvisitmyspace.com/ioncube/winred.htm (I don't think it's wise to go there unless you know what you're doing).
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Doesn't go anywhere if you copy and paste the URL as they suggest first. Guess most people are lazy and click whenever possible.
Yup, and that's how people are suckered into downloading bad stuff(tm) etc. I never read my mails in HTML form, so I always see false-links.
Spammers are low creatures.
Spam email annoys me, but my spam filter does a good job catching it. It amazes me how stupid they are. Foreign banks, credit card companies, 'male enhancements'.... That IRS one is really dumb. What really angers me is the spam phone calls. They're like an audio recording of a spam email.
I wish I could sit down with friends once a month and compare all the spam we have received. Are we all getting the same stuff? Are we each getting unique spam? Kind of a spam club. We could collect and share our favourite spam emails with each other.
"Does anyone have the IRS spam email? Would anyone like the HSBC bank spam email?"
I kinda hafta let spam in on my server - otherwise my policy would be "bounce everything" - and I do block out entire IP geographical regions from ever contacting this server via mail because all China/Korea does is spam. (I've whitelisted innocents from those countries). Whenever I'm in a good mood I remove this block and watch thousands of spams hit my inbox so then I go right back to blocking them again.
Sadly this has the side-effect that Adland doesn't have that many Chinese or Korean users, since in all fairness, I can't email those IP's either. Chinese or Korean people who have their emails on either one of the whitelisted IP#'s (most ad agencies) or gmail.com or similar get through however so in recent years this has changed as more IP's have gotten whitelisted and people from smaller IP groups have gotten gmail. My reject message gives enough instruction for any half-dim admin to understand that I've personally put it there and that they may contact me to fix it (from another IP/domain) if they need it fixed. These days everything seems handled by bots. There's been many years of talk about the fact that "bounce" messages should be stopped as well since anyone who is joejobbed gets the pain from innocently being advertised as the sender. (that happens at least twice a year to me.) Bouncing is something that needs to be done though, I personally beleive.
Anyway, since I run mailing-lists and whatnot I can't put that strict of a reject on my server as I would do if it was mine alone - I do not like to waste processing power and bandwidth on spammers, so I let nearly anything in. Some users use spamfilters that send specific keywords, domains, or known crud straight to spamfolder or /dev/null but personally I can't do that since I need to get every little thing that might bounce (which would for example, contain keywords). My inbox is a bit like a petri-dish and you can watch spam by season in it, when there are sudden bursts of spam, sure enough I'll read on some nerdy site somewhere that a virus infected billions of home computers who are now unwittingly sending spam to me and anyone else.
The advantage I have though is that I can block anything from any sender I want so, for example if peter@peterisastupiditiot.com emails me too much harassment he'll soon be met with a personalized reject-message and can never contact me again from that domain/address or IP or all of the above. :) I've done this to cheeky guys at bars who insisted on learning my email addy - upon getting theirs I blocked them immediatly. (props to you dude in Hamburg who said "ever since I saw you, I wanted to pay you to take your shirt off" who was the first one to receive this never-email-me-ever ban.)
While I can sympathize with any hetrosexual male wishing to see you topless [ :-) ], the fact that he would tell you that he wanted to pay you to take your top off, does not endear him to most people - besides the fact that he has apparently been fantasizing about you for some time (thereby making you a mere sex object), the fact that he was offering to pay you, means that he equates you with a hooker - which is even more demeaning.
[Please don't ban my emails, please please...] :-)
I keep typing "font size" as "font soze" - I guess I need to watch the Usual Suspects again. Kaiser must be calling me. :-)
try just typing "small" instead of font size. same result, less typing - no more Soze flashbacks
I'll probably type it as "smale" :-)
Oh yeah, and years ago I wrote up a seven page letter to the Korean ambassador in Denmark explaining to him that the spam coming from Korea was equal to theft of my resources and needed to be stopped, and that I would bill the Korean embassy in Denmark 1000 DKK for each manhour that I spent directly on korean spam. If it didn't stop within a week I'd change the billing to 500 DKK (or somesuch) for each spam delivered. It was pretty funny but I never had the time to deliver the damn thing in person with journalists present. Balls I had, not time tho. I did email them a copy and call the embassy several times, I'm sure I'm listed as "total wacko" in their files now. I wish I had kept the response which was diplomat-speak for "uh, hmmm, come again?"
Heav'n has no rage like love to hatred turn'd
Nor Hell a fury, like a Dabitch spamm'd
It's a good point though, if an entire country sends spam - who is responsible? It should be a diplomatic problem.
The people who buy the crap thus making sending spam profitable.
Not all spam is selling anything - a lot of it is simple scams or phishing attempts.
Granted, not all spam is selling anything, but I'd say most of it is selling something; and someone must be responding to all those penis enlargement product spams. ;)
I'm starting to put together a profile of myself based on the spam email I receive. It's getting strange. Really strange.
TDD, speaking of mails, did you ever receive mine saying that you won the rename Luke's book game?
Yes.
I apologize for not replying sooner.
I was on another frequency.