Category: spam Page 2 of 3

Amusements, part CLXXVII

On Fri August 21, 2009

I like to reward spam senders who manage to get me to open their messages. It’s rare, but it happens.

Take today for example. I received a message claiming to be from PayPal. I do not have a PayPal account, but just yesterday I placed an on-line order from a retailer who uses PayPal for payment. So I opened the message and it claimed that my account was breached and shut down until I provide my user-name and password, yadda yadda.

The URL was to PayPal.com except that when I put my cursor over it, the actual URL displayed in the status bar at the bottom of my web mail client showed an entirely different URL. So I don’t have an account and therefore it wasn’t breached, and I know this link isn’t taking me to PayPal.

What do I do?

I follow the link! Yes, I know that simply following the link can be dangerous. You’re ruining my story.

I follow the link. I enter “You Suck” as the user-name, and something I shouldn’t publish (because it’s so foul) as the password.

It’s the little things that amuse me so much.

Up your royal ass

by Rick

On Tue May 5, 2009

In customer service, me, spam

I got spam from one of my banks. It’s a ‘newsletter’ called Pursuits & Possibilities from the Royal Bank.

The insulting part is the small print at the end:

You are receiving this email update, Pursuits & Possibilities, because you have agreed to receive information about RBC products, services or offers that may benefit you.

Bullshit I did.

So I click the unsubscribe link. This page comes up:

Click submit. Do you see ‘submit’? I don’t. Oh, they’re hilarious over there at the Royal Bank.

I notice that the domain is bridgetrack.com and I block cookies from all sites that I don’t explicitly allow. Certainly this domain is not on my allowed list. Knowing this, I open Safari to see what the same URL shows. I get a simple message:

Safari can’t open the page “http://online.rbc.com/e/?e=xxxxx=xxxxx” because the page’s address isn’t valid.

It looks like the Royal Bank has a re-direct set up so that even if you check the URL in the message, you’re sent off to another company. Lovely.

Thinking that the bank may be stuck in 1998, I open a Windows virtual machine and start Internet Explorer 6. There, everything comes up just fine. Too late though, because after Safari failed, I followed the ‘Contact Us’ link on royalbank.com and left a brief message:

I received a “Pursuit & Possibilities” newsletter from you. I selected the unsubscribe link, and the page I was taken to instructed me to click ‘unsubscribe.’ If I weren’t annoyed, I would have been amused that there was no unsubscribe button/link.

Send me anything you want through the post, but only use my e‑mail address for things I specifically request. As far as I’m aware, all I’ve asked for is notification that my monthly statement is ready to be downloaded.

If I’ve previously requested any other e‑mail communication, let this message serve as notice that I’m rescinding everything else.

How long can I expect these changes to take?

They picked a bad time for this. I was in a mood already, and being spammed by a company I deal with doesn’t help.

What will it take for companies to realize that they will get nowhere by pissing off current and potential customers? Until they wise up, fuck them.

Spam: The Next Generation

by Rick

On Fri January 9, 2009

In spam, transportation

According to USA Today,

[Toyota] announced Wednesday that new Lexus vehicles will start being delivered later this year with a system that includes capability for voice messages sent directly from the automaker to its drivers.

Called Lexus Insider, the service will let Lexus send audio messages to participating owners on whatever subject it chooses, from tips on making the best use of the vehicles’ features to suggestions for a scenic drive.

Toyota officials promise to be discerning and restrained.

“We’re not going to barrage customers with marketing messages,” vows Jon Bucci, vice president of Toyota’s U.S. advanced technology unit.

You know what this means, of course. They’re going to barrage customers with marketing messages. The article states these messages can be three minutes long. Interrupt me for that length of time once a day and I’ll consider it a barrage.

Having my CD automatically muted so I can hear their audio spam would quickly sour me on the money I spent for the car. If there’s no way to completely disable this ‘feature,’ Lexus is in for a world of hurt, in both customer backlash, and reduced sales. Heck, having to go to the trouble of disabling a feature they don’t want will irk many customers, and rightly so!

June spam

by Rick

On Sun July 6, 2008

In spam

Welcome to my June spam!

20080706_spam

You’ll note that these numbers are far lower than the ones I posted for March. Unfortunately, the reason is not that the spammers are taking the summer off. We should be so lucky. Rather, I changed my strategy.

Instead of trying to prevent the delivery of spam e‑mail messages, I just let them try. This way, spammers sending messages to invalid user names get an ‘access denied’ reject error rather than a ‘try again later’ reject error. It seems they do indeed try again later because only two days in March had lower numbers than the highest day in June. Weird but true.

June had a total of 352,757 delivery attempts including just 1,200 non-spam messages. Call it an even 99.66% spam for the month.

As far as the graph goes:

burgundy red is e‑mail to invalid users (97.25%)
neon blue is e‑mail stopped by greylisting (1.39%)
pink is e‑mail from invalid domains (0.89%)

The next smallest item is one-eighth the size of the invalid domain number, and they get smaller from there.

The Gas Secret

by Rick

On Fri June 6, 2008

In spam

And speaking of spam, check out this gem:

Subject: Sick Of Paying Too Much For Gas
From: The Gas Secret <newsletter@wholesalecreams.com>
Date: Tue, 27 May 12:44 AM

Save Up To 70? Per Gallon Off Your Gas Bill. Thats Not All, Keep Your Engine Healthy,Create 30% Less Pollution And With a 100% Natural Bio-Degradable Product, Made bya California Based Emissions Company. ETHOS fuel additive.

For More Information About Ethos, Visit Us At: http://www.wholesalecreams.com/gas/

For A Short Time, Get $100 Of Gas With Any Purchase Of ETHOS.

I’m going to use a gasoline additive from an outfit named Wholesale Creams? There’s no need to get into the claims. Once you’ve had your chuckle, move along, there’s nothing to see here.