The Diary of A Simple Man

Is anyone else noticing a huge surge of spam making it through Gmail's filters? I've been getting several spams a day, almost all of it for "Canadian pharmacies". I'm reporting it as it comes in, but it has been coming for several days now without any decrease.

Okay, now the spam is getting ridiculous.

Here, look for yourself.

http://bobquasit.livejournal.com/422455.html

I'm going to lock down that post now.

Somehow this amusing bit of spam managed to get through POPfile and into my old inbox:

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On Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:02:54 -0000 (GMT), "KILL"
<deadlykillers2001@gmail.com> wrote:

Attn,

I am very sorry for you, is a pity that this is how your life is going to end as soon as you don't comply. As you can see we are the members of the Deadly Networks in the world, which is responsible for the bombing of twin tower’s in America on Sept. 11th and the bombing of London transport services on July 7th (AL-QUAEDA NETWORKS), I don't have any business with you, my duty as I am mailing you now is just to KILL you and I have to do it as I have already been paid for that.

Someone whom you called your friend wants you dead by all means, and this person have spent a lot of money in this venture, This person came to us and told me that he wanted you dead and he provided us with your name, picture and other necessary information's we needed about you. So I sent my boys to track you down this including bugging of your phones with satellite tracking devices and they have carried out the necessary investigation we needed for the operation on you, and if you doubt this information am going to give you all the necessary information about you back to you in your next reply so that you can believe me, and my boys are really on you but I told them not to kill you that I will like to contact you and see if your life is important to you and the one of your family. I called my client back and ask him of your email address which I didn't tell him what I wanted to do with it and he gave it to me and I am using it to contact you now. As I am writing you this mail my men are monitoring you and they are telling me everything about you.

Now do you want to LIVE OR DIE? Since all program has be made and draw to kill you. Get back to me now if you are ready to pay some fees to spare your Life, $15,000 is all you need to spend in this process you will first of all Pay $8,000 and then I will send a tape to you which I recorded in every discussion I had with the person who wanted you dead and as soon as you get the Tape, You will pay the remaining balance of $7,000. If you are not ready for my help, then I will carry on with my job straight-up.

WARNING: DO NOT THINK OF CONTACTING THE POLICE OR EVEN TELLING ANYONE BECAUSE I WILL KNOW ,REMEMBER, SOMEONE WHO KNOWS YOU VERY WELL WANT YOU DEAD! I WILL EXTEND IT TO YOUR FAMILY, INCASE I NOTICE SOMETHING FUNNY ABOUT YOUR TELLING THE SECURITY ABOUT IT BECAUSE A GOOD LOOK IS OUT YOU AT THE MOMENT. DO NOT COME OUT ONCE IT IS 7PM UNTIL I MAKE OUT TIME TO SEE YOU AND GIVE YOU THE TAPE OF ALL DISCUSSION WITH THE PERSON WHO WANT YOU DEAD THEN YOU CAN USE IT TO TAKE ANY LEGAL ACTION. GOOD LUCK AS I AWAIT YOUR REPLY

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I crack up every time I read this one! I suppose I should forward it to law enforcement. If this sort of spam isn't illegal, nothing is. But it's SO funny! Incidentally, it was formatted really badly, so I fixed it up as a favor to the "Deadly Network". :D

In the last couple of days I've gotten two spams for the movie 300 that have been put in the comments of old entries. Has anyone else experienced that?

Here's an amusing bit of spam that wiggled its way through the Gmail filters:

Dear friend,
I found yoaur apicture on one of the websites, can we talk to
each other? I might be coming to your place in few weeks.
This woauld be a great opportunity ato meet each other.
Btw, I am a wboman. I am 25. Drop me a line at [deleted].

The funny thing? The sender is named "Douglas".

For some reason the thought of a woman named Douglas is extremely amusing to me.

Yeah. It's a slow day here. How's your day going?

This evening I was visited by three annoyances, in three different forms:

1. A letter from my Senator, "liberal" Republican Lincoln Chaffee. "Prepared, Printed, and Mailed at Taxpayer Expense", it helpfully reminded me. And what was the urgent message that required the Senator's use of his franking privilege and my taxpayer dollars? Why, to tell me what a great job the Senator was doing, of course! He's spearheading legislation to give control of Rhode Island's Fox Point Hurricane barrier to...the Army Corps of Engineers.

Wait a minute. Aren't those the guys who screwed up the levees in New Orleans? Why would Chaffee want to boast about a bone-headed move like that? I honestly wonder.

Hmm. The flunkies who designed the mailing (at my expense) threw some "how to prepare for a disaster" info on the back side, just to make the more dim-witted of his constituents think that the Senator actually gave a damn about their pitiful lives. How thoughtful.

Am I too cynical, do you think?

2. Shortly after I read that mailing, the phone rang. It was yet another pre-recorded sales pitch for the DISH network. I waited for the prompt, and hit "1".

She sounded bored.

"Satellite Sales (?). Are you interested in signing up for the DISH network?"

"No, I'm on the do-not-call list, and you people keep calling me-"

SLAM! Must have been a bad day for her - she hung up hard. I only wish that I'd strung her along long enough to get her phone number or the right spelling of the company name, so I could file a complaint. But perhaps they'll call again.

3. After dinner, I checked my email. What joy: spammers had once again decided to infest my site. In this case, it seemed to be Italian spammers, putting hundreds of messages promoting sex, drugs, and indecipherable crap in my site guestbook, as well as in some sections of The Chaos Project.

That situation had been getting worse and worse over the past couple of weeks. I'd tried blocking IPs and key words from their URLs, but they were coming up with new ones faster than I could block them. Finally a light bulb went off over my head, and I took away the field that allowed people to list their homepages. It's a pity, but what else can I do?

Just another evening in early-21st-century America...

Right now I'd really like to be a missing person.

I should just end it right there and start walking for the horizon, but I'm not that brave.

So back to business as usual, for now.

Here. Here's a kooky, wacky spam that somehow made it through the spam filters at work.

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From: AGENT_NATHAN1919 C.I.A [cia_personalcontact004@hotmail.com]
Sent: Tue 2/21/2006 4:03 AM
Subject: YOU CAN WORK WITH US IF YOU WANT TO.

I WOULD LIKE TO SAY SORRY FOR TRESSPASS BUT FOR NOW,I THINK IT IS OF NATIONAL AND WORLD INTREST.NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE AND WHERE YOU ARE FROM,YOU HAVE THE OBLIGATION TO PROTECT YOUR SUROUNDINGS SO,IT IS IMPORTANT THAT I TOLD YOU.

I AM AGENT 1919 AND I WORK WITH THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY(C.I.A).UNDER A NEW POLICY OF PERSONAL CONTACT AND RECRUIT,WE ARE TO MEET PERSONS EITHER THROUGH PHONE,EMAIL CONTACT OR ONE ON ONE.YOU CONTACT IS VIA EMAIL,IT WILL BE NICE IF YOU REACH ME ON THIS MAIL cia_pcontact@hotmail.com


WE SHALL TALK MORE AND GET STARTED.BUT FOR NOW YOU MOST KEEP SECURITY TALKS VERY PERSONAL A YOU NEVER CAN TELL WHO IS NEST DOOR,WE SHALL BEGIN OUR TEST LESSONS AS SOON AS YOU TALK TO ME.

GOOD LUCK,
aGENT NATHAN.

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My latest post on the Fuitadnet forums:

> moderator: I just want to know what did you do to get on so many spam lists in the first place?

1. I've been on the internet going back to the late 1980's, and was active on Usenet for all that time.

2. I included my email address in all my posts (remember, this was before spam existed).

3. My primary website has been up for almost nine years now. It has always included my email address.

4. Before that, I had ANOTHER website with my email address.

I can only guess that whenever spammers swap email address lists, my address is the first one on those lists. I can assure you that I've NEVER bought anything from a spammer. I've never even used a mail client which would allow spammers to know that their spam had even been read. And normally I have always deleted all spam unread, unless I am tricked by an ambiguous subject and Sent-by.

I don't know. I'd speculate that spammers are taking revenge for my Message to Spammers, but I only put that up a couple of years ago.

HEY! My account has been SUSPENDED again, and my site is DOWN!!

You guys are going to KILL my Google ranking.

GRRRR!!!!!!

There's a chance that the Fuitadnet mods might delete this post, so I'm saving a backup copy here.

Just for the record, this problem has still not been resolved.

It has been ten days now.

This morning I had to manually delete 891 spams which had arrived since midnight.

If this goes on much longer I am going to lose my mind. Ever had to manually review 891 spam headers about sperm? It's no goddamned picnic, I can assure you.

My brain hurts.

A copy of a post this evening from the Fuitadnet forums.

Subject: SpamAssassin again

After several months SpamAssassin went down again on my account this morning. 3,000+ spams per day are now spurting into my inbox.

I am...concerned.

So, I've been off the Fnet forums for a while. Is everything good here now? Did service improve dramatically, thanks to those new extra-qualified staffers?

Jeeze, that's strange. That sounds kind of sarcastic. I didn't mean it to come out that way. Time for me to get some sleep.

Between you and me, I've got to admit something: I did mean to sound sarcastic. Well, not initially, but somewhere in the middle I lost my patience. Could you tell?