How Not To Spam

Here is an interesting case I came across last month, the reason it is interesting is not because it was spam, it was what the spammer spammed out.

Curious to know what it was?

Was it:

1. 'Porn'


2. 'Stock Pump and Dump'


3. 'Phishing'


4. '419'


5. 'Fake E-Card'


6. 'Pills, Potions or Patches'


7. 'Loans'


8. 'OEM or Pirated Software'


9. 'Malware'


10. 'Something Else'

In most normal spam runs, the spam sent out in their thousands or hundreds of thousands contain one or more of the items above. It is also often the case nowadays that those that send spam are 'professionals' rather than the 'amateurs' that have been responsible for the vast amount of the 'stuff' that ended up in our e-mail inboxes up to the end of 2003.

These new breed of spammers use tools and botnets to automate the creation and distribution of their, or their customers 'crud'. You didn't think it is sent out by a human being one piece at a time, did you?

So, it is most 'gratifying' to see that these 'professional spammers' are after all, human, and like all humans they are prone to make mistakes. Below are two screen shots of the spam e-mail I received during June which I found to be most heartwarming, and raised a wry smile and a small chuckle:




For those of you that don't recognize the content in the e-mail contained in the screen shots above, what you see is not the usual spam e-mail contents but the configuration file for the tool that the spammer was trying to use to send out his spam, talk about ironic! ;-)

I wonder if the spammer [the dirty rat] responsible for this 'unprofessional' spam run was paid a visit by his customer or 'The Boss' or his 'Enforcers'? Maybe he was 'roughed-up' a bit, got 'knee-capped', or woke up and found a 'horses-head' in bed with him or took a 'swim with the fishes'?

Yes, most of the spammers do now work for 'organised crime syndicates', so the above suggestions are not that far fetched! ;-)