# Idiot spam again



## robert@fm (Apr 21, 2016)

I have over the past couple of days received bodybuilding spams.  Bodybuilding? When I find the 9" step up to my front door a major obstacle (Lambeth, the Cop-out Council, promised me about 15 months ago that they would be installing grab-rails either side of the porch, but I'm not holding my breath)? One said something like "If you're not interested, just unsubscribe", while the second was asking me to "confirm" a "subscription" which I never entered into, so on the basis of those sentences I've reported both of them as phishing spams. 

Then there are the ones posted to Wikia. They usually begin something like "I have been following this weblog with interest" — a blatant and obvious lie, for if they had been following the wiki in question even superficially, let alone with interest, they would know that it is a wiki, not a blog. 

There was one recently (on April 1, appropriately enough) which was posted to multiple and widely different wikis (itself enough to be a "this is spam" flag) which asked people their opinions of the next US President! Nowhere near on-topic on any of the wikis where I saw it, and in any case there's no telling just yet who that person will be, so it's way too early to have an opinion (other than "I hope it isn't McDonald Fart", which is certainly my opinion).


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## Northerner (Apr 22, 2016)

I suppose they must 'catch' some people with these clearly unsophisticated attempts, but it often makes me wonder why they are so often so amateurish and obvious to most people with a bit of wit  Or is it just that there are an awful lot of amateur spammers around? I seem to remember reading a while ago that the vast majority of spam originates from very few sources though.


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## Diabeticliberty (Apr 22, 2016)

In quite a lot of cases sophisticated spammers will use stuff that looks deliberately unsophisticated. They do this as a kind of rudimentary selection process to weed out people who are clued up enough not to fall for their silly nonsense. What then remains for them is a pool of poor souls on whom these parasites can feed.


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## Northerner (Apr 22, 2016)

Diabeticliberty said:


> In quite a lot of cases sophisticated spammers will use stuff that looks deliberately unsophisticated. They do this as a kind of rudimentary selection process to weed out people who are clued up enough not to fall for their silly nonsense. What then remains for them is a pool of poor souls on whom these parasites can feed.


Hadn't thought of it that way


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## trophywench (Apr 22, 2016)

I've had quite a number of emails recently offering to make me a better screw (their words, not mine) by taking something to improve my erections.

Pete's had them too, it is hilarious considering hes had a prostatectomy and it wasn't able to be a 'nerve sparing' one - and funnily enough I have never been the owner of the basic equipment.  Actually though - must be bloody good stuff it it could give either of us a hard-on!


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## Ralph-YK (Apr 22, 2016)

robert@fm said:


> (Lambeth, the Cop-out Council, promised me about 15 months ago that they would be installing grab-rails either side of the porch, but I'm not holding my breath)


My local council put rails on my local library steps.  One month before it closed to be redeveloped.  When it re-opened they'd kept the old frontage and steps.  Having got rid of the rail and not provided disabled/level access.


Diabeticliberty said:


> In quite a lot of cases sophisticated spammers will use stuff that looks deliberately unsophisticated. They do this as a kind of rudimentary selection process to weed out people who are clued up enough not to fall for their silly nonsense. What then remains for them is a pool of poor souls on whom these parasites can feed.


I've heard something like this before.  People who'd respond if it was a good e-mail, then drop out later, get eliminated sooner.


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## TheClockworkDodo (Apr 22, 2016)

Jenny, I get those too, and also ones purporting to be from Russian models who are anxious to meet me.

I think R is quite disappointed - he doesn't, he gets ones from Nigerians wanting him to send them money.


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## trophywench (Apr 23, 2016)

Oh gosh Dodo - the ones Pete gets them from want to send HIM money - just need his bank details.  He's actually just said he's down to his last few billion out of all he's been offered and hasn't heard from any of their friends for ages.


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## Sally71 (Apr 23, 2016)

If you get any junk mail in the post, especially the ones that promise you great things if you send them an "administration fee", if you are daft enough to reply to one they put your name on a "suckers list" and circulate it to loads of other companies.  And then you get absolutely BOMBARDED with similar mail from all over the place.  Wonder if it's similar for email?


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## Amigo (Apr 23, 2016)

By sheer coincidence I've just had a spam email with the title, 'watch out when you're alone!'...

It's clearly intended to frighten but goes on to say it's going to show you something 'private' so make sure no one else is watching. These emails could terrify some people. I know it's just a psychologically intended virus.


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## robert@fm (Apr 23, 2016)

Sally71 said:


> If you get any junk mail in the post, especially the ones that promise you great things if you send them an "administration fee", if you are daft enough to reply to one they put your name on a "suckers list" and circulate it to loads of other companies.  And then you get absolutely BOMBARDED with similar mail from all over the place.  Wonder if it's similar for email?


Of course it is, that's what those "unsubscribe" links in spam emails are for. They say "click here to unsubscribe", but they mean "click here to confirm that this is a valid email address which someone reads and responds to, and which is thus worth flooding with a lot more spam". 

A more subtle version of this trick is to include a small (possibly invisible) image which is located on the spammer's server, and which thus confirms your address the moment you open the spam. This is why good email clients (such as Google) block loading of remote images unless you give permission.

Another variant is to use a fake "personal" message, with a To address similar to, but not quite the same as, yours; aimed at tricking you into making some kind of reply. This is because the headers of a spam email are largely meaningless; the spammer can make them say anything they need to say. Don't be fooled; email _cannot_ "go astray" in this way, if it arrived in _your_ inbox then _your_ address is in the SMTP Envelope, regardless of what the headers say.


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## robert@fm (Apr 23, 2016)

I just now received another of those "looking for a hot boyfriend" spams which was probably sent by a hairy, tattooed 50-year-old bloke, and which claimed to have found me via my Twitter profile — the one which is so hard to find that even I didn't know I had it, or the associated account either.  (And another "this is a phishing attempt" flag, if I hadn't already been aware, was that the spammer assumed that the alphabetic part of my email username is my actual name; it isn't, it's a transliteration into Latin of a Greek word which doesn't bear the faintest resemblance to any English name.) Needless to say, Google had already flagged it as phishing before I opened it.


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## Northerner (Apr 23, 2016)

I get spam emails about WhatsApp and Instagram things 'waiting for me', but I have never subscribed to either  My email is pretty nonsensical too, but is often treated as a genuine name!


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## AlisonM (Apr 23, 2016)

Sally71 said:


> If you get any junk mail in the post, especially the ones that promise you great things if you send them an "administration fee", if you are daft enough to reply to one they put your name on a "suckers list" and circulate it to loads of other companies.  And then you get absolutely BOMBARDED with similar mail from all over the place.  Wonder if it's similar for email?


I used to hang onto those till I had two then swap the paperwork and send it back - uncompleted of course. I bet it caused a lot of confusion at the one to receive their SAE back with someone else's junk mail in it.7

Nowadays I have a junk email addy I use for all my on line stuff, joining, buying, gaming etc and a set of excellent spam filters that chuck all the junk in the junk folder. I have a quick look from time to time at the headers and might open one now and again if it looks amusing and I want a chuckle at their naiveté in thinking I might actually want a bigger one, how can you enlarge something that doesn't exist?


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## trophywench (Apr 23, 2016)

I've had 29 spam emails today - the bulk purport to come from Morrison's Sainsbury's and Tesco.  The latter do actually have my email address, and they send me emails but theirs actually show that they come from Tesco or Tesco Bank.  Another offering me one easy step to get over ED - my hair was sticking up when I got out of bed this morning - is that what they want to cure? - said it came from someone called Jenny C etc - ie ME !  So I've had to mark me as Junk.

Pete insists it's because I 'do all those surveys all the time'.  The last I dunno how many have only been for DUK.

Northerner can you actually approach them and ask if anyone else can get hold of the email addresses please?  Because I must be doing something and I haven't a clue what.


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## Ralph-YK (Apr 23, 2016)

trophywench said:


> Pete insists it's because I 'do all those surveys all the time'. The last I dunno how many have only been for DUK.
> Northerner can you actually approach them and ask if anyone else can get hold of the email addresses please? Because I must be doing something and I haven't a clue what.


I've not been doing surveys on.  Look for some small, grey writing that says something like "select if you don't want us to share your details with selected partners!"  Apparently a lot of organisations have that.  If you miss it then they sell your info to everyone else.


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## Diabeticliberty (Apr 23, 2016)

Your details are worth lots of money to these people.  Even the ones who are legitimate will pay for them. There are organisations around who harvest them. You need to be really, really careful who you give your details to and what details you give. I personally feel it better to spam filter them rather than using the unsubscribe tab that most rubber emails have. If you click unsubscribe then the other end verifies your email address as having a live, responsive recipient and organisations will pay for live addresses. Regarding the stuff that is obviously spoof better to delete them unopened as they usually explode in your face when you go near them ( a metaphorical explosion of course)


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## Ralph-YK (Apr 23, 2016)

One thing everyone should do is have an e-mail address that is used for nothing other than handing out to organisations. Preferably one that doesn't have any part or form of your name in it.  Then use that for all your signing up, serveys etc.


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## TheClockworkDodo (Apr 23, 2016)

AlisonM said:


> I used to hang onto those till I had two then swap the paperwork and send it back - uncompleted of course. I bet it caused a lot of confusion at the one to receive their SAE back with someone else's junk mail in it.



I like that idea, will have to remember that 

I don't open spam, certainly don't unsubscribe from it, and always tick the box to tell genuine companies not to share my details, but I still get loads of spam.  I suspect there are robots just working through all combinations of letters with @gmail or whatever at the end knowing that some of the emails they send will be to real addresses.


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## robert@fm (Apr 24, 2016)

trophywench said:


> Another ... said it came from someone called Jenny C etc - ie ME !


That's another common spammer trick; they set the From address of their fake headers to be the same as the To, on the assumption that people will be daft enough to whitelist their own address. For me (and in the Google webmail client) it has the reverse effect, of being a 100% positive "this is spam" indicator. (More certain even than a "priority: urgent" flag, since (in over 20 years of receiving countless thousands of emails) I have actually received *one* "urgent" message which really was urgent, rather than spam, so that indicator is just 99.9% positive.)


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## trophywench (Apr 24, 2016)

LOL - I am not the hottest computer geek these days but we've needed to do these things since before any Forum existed.  They were all Newsgroups and American LOL  (eg alt.support.diabetes ROFLMAO - where that Shanley bloke from Oz hung out amongst others) Of course I tick the 'don't send me crap' button, I don't give folk my details unless I actually want them to have it, I never 'unsubscribe' from iffy things and I mark them all as 'Junk'.  It doesn't stop them.

Oh and my niece in Oz is also sending me crap - she isn't, but she sent it me before I did!


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## robert@fm (Apr 24, 2016)

One trouble is that, even if you take care not to let your address fall into even slightly suspect hands, you could still have a "friend" who adds your address to one of those list emails (jokes, so-called "amazing facts" which are often neither, etc) which have dozens or hundreds of addresses in the To field, just waiting for any spammer who gets sent the list to harvest them.  Good practice is (1) don't circulate dumb list emails, or if you absolutely must or need to do this, (2) put all the addresses in the BCC field; this is often called a "header" but it isn't because it isn't sent (unless the mail client used has a bug), it's just used to create the To field of the SMTP Envelope so no recipient sees any email address except their own. The trouble is, it takes only *one* person to not follow good practice, to compromise everybody's addresses.


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## robert@fm (Apr 24, 2016)

OMG, alt.support.diabetes — I wonder if that Moronjustice Ironjustice idiot still hangs out there? "All illness, without exception, is caused by the presence of iron in the diet" — so he had clearly never heard of anaemia, for a start...

I reckon I got better diabetes support on alt.cats.world.domination.


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## Ljc (Apr 24, 2016)

robert@fm said:


> OMG, alt.support.diabetes — I wonder if that Moronjustice Ironjustice idiot still hangs out there? "All illness, without exception, is caused by the presence of iron in the diet" — so he had clearly never heard of anaemia, for a start...
> 
> I reckon I got better diabetes support on alt.cats.world.domination.


All I can say is, that I must be incredibly well then perhaps I should stop taking my Ferrous Fumerate  

I love spam...... fritters, sarnies etc
It seems I now like sending ED ones to myself  ,I didn't know it was possible for me to suffer from ED, you live and learn lol.
My 90 year old dad is a whiz when he gets those phone calls, I'm sure  you know the ones I mean ,often purporting to be from Windows or Norton.
He ties them up for at least 20 mins often longer.
" something wrong with my windows , I only had a them put in last week" or
" oh your from Norton , I've been meaning to contact you, I've got a problem and need your help, I don't have a computer , do you mean my lap top, oh I see, a laptop is a computer , I didn't know that "
Is often how he starts off , if they haven't hung up by the time he's got fed up with it, he then teaches them a few words that would curl their hair.


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## Northerner (Apr 24, 2016)

Diabetes UK don't share your details with anyone else. I

What can also happen (happened to me once) is that a spammer can get hold of another person's email address book - if you're on it then you'l start getting spam. I had to stop using a freeserve email that I'd had for years because I was getting 3000 spams a day on it and Orange, who had taken freeserve over from Dixons, wouldn't do anything about it as they wanted to discourage freeserve users. It worked.


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## AlisonM (Apr 24, 2016)

I feel cheated, I don't get emails from myself!


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## trophywench (Apr 24, 2016)

Oh I'll forward some ED ones Alison so you don't feel so left out.  (I won't, obviously) Mate - I envy you!

Pete could ask them if Norton are still making motorbikes, then?  We hadn't thought of the Windows one - good idea!  (OTOH I think every real DG company in the UK knows not to ring us by now LOL)


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## Ljc (Apr 24, 2016)

AlisonM said:


> I feel cheated, I don't get emails from myself!


If I didn't know better I'd say my computer is very clever


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## robert@fm (Apr 24, 2016)

Diabeticliberty said:


> Regarding the stuff that is obviously spoof better to delete them unopened as they usually explode in your face when you go near them



Actually, there's no danger in opening even phishing spams if you have a good email client which doesn't load remote images or acknowledge read receipt requests until and unless you give the go-ahead (and I never acknowledge any read receipt request anyway, for privacy reasons, although it has been years since I last got one; perhaps people are aware of the security implications) and which never runs executable content under any circumstances (I think Microsoft Outlook Execrable was the only client dumb enough to pull that stupid stunt), and you don't click on links or answer in any way.

I usually open obvious phishing spams to see if GMail has flagged them as such (it often hasn't), and sometimes to have a good laugh at the spammer or see how many millions of dollars I'm being offered _this_ time (it's nearly always US dollars, for some reason)...


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## Amigo (Apr 24, 2016)

I receive oodles of emails from 'myself' it seems. I appear to have an unhealthy interest in improving an appendage I don't possess. Clearly it's spam or I'm anatomically incorrect!


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## trophywench (Apr 24, 2016)

Amigo - it's actually double-hilarious here at the mo - Pete  had a prostatectomy last November and unfortunately if couldn't be a 'nerve sparing' one.  So guess what?  The spirit's willing, but the flesh is weak!  We're working on it though, proper little voyage of discovery!  And at least no-one has to sleep on a damp patch any more!


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