Today’s spam

Here’s what’s in my junk mail folder today:

image

What is up with all that? Apparently I sent a payment to myself, I initiated another payment to myself, I am a user of myself who’s received exclusive offers for January, and I received a payment from myself. Wow! Furthermore, an internal discussion group (IPv6) is apparently engaging in a PayPal transaction, and M & T Bank’s mailer needs to make doubly sure that I realize I’m receiving a new message.

I don’t know where to direct my ire—at the spammers who litter the Internet with their spew or at the people who still get duped by it. Spam would wither away if everyone just ignored it. But I guess enough people are lured by cheap mortgages for their penis extensions that the spammers rake in enough money to cover their costs…so sad.

Published 21 January 09 10:13 by Steve Riley

Comments

# y2kade said on January 22, 2009 2:12 PM:

I'm still amazed at how spam is still so prevalent.

# Darren said on January 22, 2009 4:07 PM:

As a victim of about 50 spam messages a day (as we probably all are), I couldn't agree more.

# Chrismor said on January 22, 2009 9:41 PM:

You only get 50?

My Spam counts are in the hundreds (or more) everyday.

# Paul said on January 22, 2009 10:42 PM:

SPAM, what's that, I;ve seen none for 2 years now. I say you're with the wrong ISP, with Internode's filtering, I get zero spam, and never seen more than 1-2 items in my held as possible spam items

# scristian said on January 23, 2009 5:06 AM:

A spam email like this crash my email servers where was set auto-reply creating a loop.

# Chris Lehr said on January 26, 2009 11:11 AM:

It's not a real screenshot unless you had to edit for content  :)  I get more porn spam than anything else in my spam boxes now.

# Morgan Storey said on January 27, 2009 9:58 PM:

There is a lot of these going a round, admitedly I don't see almost any (maybe one a month) in my personal or work email's inbox, they get blocked by my/our 3rd party spam filters.

That being said I checked my personal domain's spam box and I am getting about 5000/month, so count yourself lucky.

# Reza said on January 31, 2009 7:04 AM:

It is a good news for user which Outlook and Exchange and in general Microsoft Junk mail filter is powerful enough to stop these bad guys. Steve also pass away his email address for everyone who has a question. Sometimes bad guys are there and want to do something bad. The best practice for fight against spam is to use Anti-spam solution and also try to report spams in Live hotmail and if you chose "join Microsoft customer improvement program" then it will help Microsoft to fight spammer. if you are poor and don't want to buy outlook then if you have Windows Vista then you have Windows Mail with junk filter and if you have Windows XP then you may use Free Microsoft Live Mail (it is for client not Hotmail).

# Matt said on February 1, 2009 7:17 AM:

Until e-mail administrators are forced to use something like SPF then this problem is not going away.

Unfortunately most e-mail protocols are insecure by design, and this is why the spammers can function the way they do.

# Alun Jones said on February 13, 2009 11:31 PM:

I still maintain that for spam to survive it is not necessary for spammers to make money, it is only necessary for spammers to believe they will make money. As long as the guys selling spamming tools can convince the spammers that the tools will make them money, the spamming tools will be used.

What will change spamming behaviour is to make it appear that spam will lose money. Ignoring spam will not be sufficient - spam must be punished.

# Daniel said on February 25, 2009 3:56 PM:

If these are the messages that you received in your @microsoft address, shouldn’t the spam emails that seem to come from the microsoft.com domain not even be there ?

It is my opinion that inbound SMTP servers should at least block spam email from the domain they control and only accept email from a list of trusted servers. Do you share this opinion?

# stryqx said on February 25, 2009 10:23 PM:

If that's your @microsoft address then some of your ire should be directed at MSIT's way :-)

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