Re: A new level of spam?

[Ned Bedinger <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com>]

Collin Turner wrote:
> A recent report stated that 1 of 3 spam messages results in a conversion
> (click/sale). Until people get over their...um...fetish for Fine Replica
> Watches? I think we're in it for the long haul. 

I can't quite account for the people who click with abandon, but I 
expect that somewhere in the shuttered recesses of their bedazzled inner 
selves, they know good and well that they shouldn't click but do it anyway.

Here's my slightly incredible tale illustrating an insidious 
ingeniousness of the spammer class we're talking about:

I sent an email to my congress critter's official email address and got 
a quick reply. But! you guessed it, the spam was in the reply, which 
wasn't from my elected representative at all--the sender's info was 
spoofed. If I had to guess how it happened, I'd say someone between my 
ISP and the congressional mail servers has a sniffer picking out the 
addresses of emailers to congress. But who? And why??

Same thing has happened with United Parcel Service and PayPal recently. 
I did some dealings with each, and received administrative emails from 
each shortly thereafter. Being the fetish-driven mail junkie with the 
streak of deep denial about links I want to click, I clicked the links 
in these emails, but brother they were bogus, and I didn't check them 
out first.  **MELTDOWN**

All together now:  "Ned, you are an idiot."

So I'm reading up on the subject of human error now, and getting a lot 
of solace from the fact that I formed my habits (the ones that led me to 
trust email from sites I'd recently visited, after sooo many years and 
thousands of successful spam interceptions), before the internet became 
so dangerous. For me now, this means that I need to partake of adult 
learning--the kind that re-analyzes the risks, and renovates the frowsy 
smug corner of my mind where I walked right into two malware sites in 
one week. That corner's got to be turned inside out. Steam cleaned, 
disinfected, and sent to the recycler for shredding. Or maybe vitrified 
and sent to a hazardous waste facility.

Fore shore, the 'net is not in Kansas anymore! Oh, for the good old 
days, before Delphi got onto the internet.

Ned Bedinger
doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com



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