Kill the spammers

I don’t consider myself a violent person, but I’m just about fed up with the amount of spam I receive in my email.  The final straw for me has been receiving spam in foreign languages—I’m now getting spam in what looks to be Russian and Mandarin.  With all the little websites we run, and all our “irons in the fire”, I monitor 27 different email addresses (I have individual admin email addresses and “help” email addresses for each message board we run, for example), and I’m receiving about 300+ spam messages every 24 hours.  I wake up to at least 60 every morning, and then they come in chunks of 10 or so every 15 minutes, all day long.  I’m going to have to change a few of the email addys I use for admin purposes because those are easy to modify, but there’s not much I can do about the others.  What really chaps my ass about spam is that Flippy and I have made a living for the past eight years doing Internet marketing, and we’ve never, ever had to spam or do anything even remotely “dirty”.  What kind of morons are actually responding to spam they receive to give the spammers encouragement?!  Does someone out there truly believe they’re been “prequalified for a mortgage loan of $800000 with payments of only $150 per month”?!  Is anyone really responding to ads which advertise “VIwxAGRA”?!  The only positive thing about the spam trend is that it seems to be slowly dying.  The ads I now receive are strictly limited to illegal software, pills, mortgages, watches, and stocks, so the spammers seem to have lost their opportunities in other sectors (I think the FTC should be able to eventually eliminate the stock spam, too).  I don’t even receive porn spam anymore, although I think Flippy might get the occasional piece of it.  Anyway, that’s my vent for the day.  Kill the spammers and make their hides into ergonomic desk chairs.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 10/14 at 10:03 PM

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  1. I agree, although I’m thinking their skins would be too greasy to make a decent chair.

    Posted by Diana  on  10/15  at  03:17 AM

  2. What bemuses me about the V1agr4 ads… if they can’t spell the drug properly why on earth would I believe they got the formula right? We all know what Viagra does, but Veeegra is probably something designed to make it shrivel and fall off.

    And the make it bigger spams. Gosh. It is true. Size DOES MATTER. If it’s too big, it hurts like hell!!!!  Not an issue with you of course, but that’s my perspective. Men come in 3 sizes. Tasty, comfy, and get away from me, you freak.

    Posted by Georg  on  10/16  at  12:24 PM

  3. Oh, I was married to a man once… I totally get it.  Bigger isn’t necessarily better, and the only people who seem truly concerned about “bigger” are the men themselves.  Interestingly, gay male porn is very size-oriented, and straight-man porn is size-oriented, yet I don’t think “porn for women” is.  (We worked in online porn for a number of years, hence my knowledge of these things, lest you think I’m some kind of porn addict).

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  10/16  at  01:19 PM

  4. I think a certain knowledge of porn is healthy, but that’s my bias. I confess however, that I know little of “porn for women.”

    Posted by Georg  on  10/16  at  02:56 PM

  5. I’ve noticed that most of the spam is either directed at men or either gender, but rarely women. Wonder why? grin

    But some of the spammers’ “names” are hilarious. Would someone really name their child Puzzles Celebrate? How about Purr Slowly?

    And really, my cats did NOT order a digital camera on Ebay and fail to pay for it, so I won’t click here to make arrangements.

    Posted by Victor Tabbycat's Mom  on  10/17  at  10:11 AM

  6. Oooh, those faux eBay spams are pretty impressive.  Maybe they don’t work on someone who never goes near eBay, but for those of us who buy and sell on a regular basis, the first few were definitely attention-grabbing.  I’m so suspicious of everything that I don’t think I’ve ever been fooled, but those eBay ones came pretty close!

    I do get a kick out of some of the email subject titles, especially the ones randomly generated to get past spam filters.  I get things like, “Hello, oily fishcakes!” Someone should keep a list.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  10/17  at  08:35 PM

  7. That is too funny! I’ve also thought of making a list of the headers, some of them are almost poetic. I get a ton of those to my yahoogroup - yahoo is good at blocking them, but as list owner I get them in my in-box. (Yahoo wants to give me the option of posting them to the list, I guess.)
    Let me know if you want gmail invites. I’m sure you’re already hip to gmail...but it’s the best email program I’ve seen, and everyone I know who has tried it have abandoned their other accounts. Not one single spam email, either.

    Posted by Carina  on  10/19  at  11:23 PM

  8. I like Gmail, too, although I only use it for a couple of business accounts.  I like to try to stick to using an email address at a domain that I own (that way I don’t have to worry that I might go out of business one day, or that I might decide to start charging myself for email privileges), but I’ve got quite a few large websites where I’ve had to make my contact information very prominent and public.  Those are the email addresses which are getting spammed.  I can stop the spam on the server to a degree, but it’s hard to stop the messages with the random text as a subject.  I also worry that if I’m offering customer service via an email address, I don’t want to inadvertently delete someone’s request for assistance.  You’d be surprised at the number of people who still think “Hello” is an appropriate subject line for an email.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  10/20  at  09:07 PM
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