The Scariest Spam Titles
Most of the time, it’s easy to recognize spam just from the title alone. For instance, “You have a postcard!”, “You’ve Received a Greeting Card!”, “Increase Your Manlihood”, and “buy cheap oem software” find their way to the junk folder immediately.
But there are a few that make us pause before hitting the delete button. I found that I read the message because the title was scary enough to warrant it. Here’s a couple of the scariest spam titles:
Scary Spam Title #1 - Your Internet Access Is Going to Be Suspended
The sender of this one is generally called “Monitoring Team.” The first time I got it, I was not sure if someone had illegally downloaded software with my computer. When I read the message, I realized it was spam. I get at least five of these a day. Here’s the message, typos and all:
Your internet access is going to get suspended.
The Internet Service Provider Consorcium was made to protect the rights of software authors, artists.
We conduct regular wiretapping on our networks, to monitor criminal acts.
We are aware of your illegal activities on the internet wich were originating from
You can check the report of your activities in the past 6 month that we have attached. We strongly advise you to stop your activities regarding the illegal downloading of copyrighted material of your internet access will be suspended.
Sincerely
ICS Monitoring Team
With this email there’s usually an attachment called “McAfee Email Scan Report.” I never open it.
Scary Spam Title #2 - UPS Mail Support
If you’re in business for yourself, you probably send out a lot of postal mail like I do. So when an email from UPS Mail Support with a tracking number lands in your email in-box, you might think it has to do wtih a shipment you recently sent. Never open the attachment. Just delete. Here’s what the email looks like:
Scary Spam Title #3 - Google Adwords Alert
When this one comes in, it is allegedly from “Google Adwords.” Since I use Adwords, I read the email. Here’s the spam message:
Our system was unable to process a payment for your outstanding Google AdWords account balance using your primary credit card. For the time being, your account is still open, and your ads are still running. However, we require you to update the payment information in your AdWords account very soon in order to ensure continued ad serving.
Please update your credit card information in order to trigger our billing system to try processing your payment again. If you plan to use the same credit card(s), please use the ‘Retry Card’ button on the Billing Preferences page of your account. Otherwise, please follow the steps below to update the information in your AdWords account.
1. Log in to your AdWords account at: http://adwords.google.com
2. Click the ‘My Account’ tab.
3. Click ‘Billing Preferences’ link.
4. Click Edit next to the appropriate ‘Payment Details’ section.
5. Enter your new or updated payment information.
6. Click ‘Save Changes’ when you have finished.
In the future, you may wish to use a back up credit card in order to help ensure continuous delivery of your ads. You can add a back up credit card by visiting your Billing Preferences page or visit the AdWords Help Centre for more.
Tip: You can review the status of your billing on the Billing Summary page, under the ‘My Account’ tab. If a payment has been declined, click ‘Payment Declined’ beside the line item to review information for that particular payment. Once your payment has been processed successfully, you can view and print an invoice from your Billing Summary page.
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This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message. If you have any questions, please visit the Google AdWords Help Centre at https://adwords.google.com/support/?hl=en_GB to find answers to frequently asked questions and a ‘contact us’ link near the bottom of the page. —————————————————————-
Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords. We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.
Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team
I’ve deleted the following, so I don’t have the text, but here are some more scary titles:
- Violation of ICANN Policies - In this email, you are accused of not updating your contact information for your domain. Since I recently moved, this one really made my heart leap. Instead of clicking the link that was in the email, I went directly to my registrar and updated my new address. I still get at least ten of these a week.
- Your Payment Failed - I frequently receive these for products I never purchased.
Filtering Spam from Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express
Spam Bully has been praised by media and tech leaders such as The Wall Street Journal, Wired Magazine and USA Today. You can get a free 14-day trial.
This software, which works with your Outlook or Outlook Express program (including the Vista version), has an impressive array of features, including:
- Bayesian Spam Filter - Intelligently knows which emails you’ve received are good and which are spam by using artificial intelligence and server blacklists. Makes sure good emails make it to your Inbox.
- Allow/Block List - Decide who and what makes it into your Inbox.
- Punish/Bounce/Report/Challenge - Get back at spammers by increasing their costs, returning their spam, and reporting them to the servers they came from and the FTC. Email a special password to an unfamiliar sender that they must correctly type in before their email is allowed to your Inbox.
- Auto-Delete - Optionally you can just delete spam messages instead of sorting them to a spam folder. You never have to see a spam message again.
- Cellphone Forwarding - Forward only good email to your cell phone.
- Statistics - Comprehensive graphing and statistics shows you how well SpamBully is working.
- Multi-Language Interface - Easily and automatically convert Spam Bully into English, Spanish, German, Russian, and other popular languages.
The Spam Bully site has a more detailed list of all the features, plus a dozen screen shots. The statistics, for instance, are really interesting, showing where spam has originated:
The titles might sound ominous, but it’s easy to identify and zap spam email with a filtering tool such as Spam Bully. Try it out for the next 14 days and enjoy your clean inbox.
An Interesting Tidbit - Spam is Profitable
TechRadar published a study that found that spam is still profitable. Even though the response rate to spam is less than 0.00001%, the study found that spammers make approximately $7,000 a year.
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