I think it was about a year ago that I got a spam that attempted to evade the filters by inserting an anodyne comment within each keyword, thus: bre<!–brother–>asts. Someone has now improved the wheeze, by making the comment unique to the recipient: bre<!–youraddress–>asts.

2004 Oct 21: How appropriate that a post about dishonest mail should be numbered 419.

(from a spam for growth hormone): “As seen on NBC, CBS, CNN, and even Oprah!”

Speaking of spam, I almost wonder whether shiny new “Diplomas from prestigious non-accredited universities based on your present knowledge and life experience” might be more useful than my BS (1981) in a field in which I haven’t worked in fifteen years.

My latest spam report to kornet got bounced by – what else? – a spam filter.

I wish I were clever enough to write spoofs like The Kizombe Correspondence. (from acb)

The Economist reports:

In an out-of-court settlement between Nigeria’s government and the family of the late Sani Abacha, $1 billion that the military ruler looted from the central bank and stashed in banks worldwide will be returned to Nigeria.

You know what this means? They’ll have to smuggle it out all over again, and helpful foreigners will have another opportunity to cash in!!

(If you don’t know what I’m on about, look up “419”.)

*sigh* It’s no fun trying to track down spammers anymore. A large fraction of them use cn.net, which ignores my mail, and/or xo.net, which explicitly rejects it!

And then there’s the spammer who goes to such lengths to cover its tracks that Netscape can’t parse its silly links. Is it zaam.net, goopt.net, or something else again?