June 22, 2004
Spammers are also stupid.
A while ago, I wrote that spammers amaze me sometimes. Well, it seems that besides insistent and funny, they're also stupid, as David discovered when he found out that spammers apparently tried to sell some computer products or accessories to his friend's cat.
What's weird about this is that I did not find this at all strange. Some years ago, I posted a message to a FreeBSD mailing list, explaining some esoteric details about changing the mail agent used by send-pr(8). Suffice it to say that this involves specifying a command-line option '-f' followed by an e-mail address, so my e-mail message contained the string '-froam@ringlet.net'. I guess you already see where this is going - that's right, to this day the ringlet.net mailservers are receiving e-mail addressed to -froam@ringlet.net! :)
Imagine this: over three years of sending e-mail to an address that does not exist, an address that has zilch, nada, absolutely no possible reason to exist! In David's case, one can imagine that this particular cat can, and *will*, receive fan-mail eventually... but my negative froam? Oh well, one never knows, I guess they have to explore any and all marketing opportunities before repenting their sins...
Posted by roam at June 22, 2004 12:45 AM
