What is this spam?
March 19, 2009 7:55 AM Subscribe
What's the scam in my spam?
Lately, we've been getting a lot of spam that's in the vein of "How much is a diamond worth?" and "How much does it cost to drive to Canada?" and "How much does it cost to eat in Florida?"
The contents of the spam are always just a few sentences asking a question that makes sense but is quasi-unanswerable without a ton more information, and usually not appropriate to the addresses it's being sent to, an apology of some kind for needing to ask and a single first name signed.
They're grammatical, and not obviously selling anything, and they contain no links, so what's the point of them? Are they just email harvesters trying to confirm that our addresses actually exist?
posted by jacquilynne to computers & internet (4 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
Your spammer is tidying their spamlist to sort it into three categories:
1. addresses for which delivery cannot be completed
2. addresses for which delivery seems to complete
3. addresses for which the owner responds to spam
Typically your spammers have multiple sources of addresses of varying reliability. Your big spam operators are going to try to hone the list on occasion, and this is how they're doing it this time around. Last round was blank messages and "hi" messages and such.
I have no idea why this spammer, of all possible spammers, seems to be literate where the rest are not.
posted by majick at 8:20 AM on March 19, 2009 [3 favorites]