Spammers With A Sense of Humor
Written by Sue Walsh on January 21, 2013
Spammers are known for being persistent, annoying and, at times, malicious. Apparently some of them are comedians as well. Some detected spam recently caught the eye of researchers due to its required CAN-SPAM disclaimer. The spammers behind it obviously decided to have some fun:
“This message was optimized to be viewed on awesome computers such as the one you’re probably using. However there are so many ways to view emails these days that our message may be displayed differently for you. Perhaps you’re laying in bed using a tablet or you’re taking a bath while using your laptop (not recommended), and hopefully you’re not viewing this message on a smartphone while dodging traffic or your neighbor’s dog Spike. If you’d like to let us know which device you use to read your mail please send us that comment here. We’ll be happy to make your offer viewing experience that much easier.
Do these offers not tickle your fancy? We’re sorry to hear that, please go ahead and unsubscribe.”
The link provided to tell them what you read their spam on actually works and it appears they really want to know! They seem to be considerate spammers who want to make sure their unwanted messages look good on whatever device you read email on! I don’t suggest you give them any info -the last thing anyone should do is willingly hand over personal info to a spammer. All kidding aside, the disclaimer should have included their postal address and not buried the unsubscribe instructions at the bottom. Spam is no joke!
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I commented on the wrong page. Seriously. Anyway, to begin the flow of discussion, I’ll start correctly here:
Well, a lot of spam mails are really humorous considering how they phrase their headlines and their lead paragraph just to capture your attention. A lot of these spam mails are also created by non-English-speaking people, so you can just think about the grammar and spelling. However, presenting spam threats in this manner is, I think, not helping. You just don’t make light of something as serious as a computer threat that could lead to identity theft. In fact, no one should open spam because we don’t know how some work these days anymore. It’s possible that the moment they are opened, botnets are activated, sending tons of them straight to your inbox.
Now, this is news! Obviously, spammers know that humor attracts readers’ attention and they play on it. Otherwise, Ella is right – some of the spam messages are written in such a language they can make one laugh for hours but the message the author uses as an example uses humor on deliberately.