Tag: Spam

Barking Up the Wrong Tree

Lonely hearts1

I’m used to receiving tons of emails telling me that a little blue pill will put the spring back into my step or I’ve hit the jackpot in the Burkina Faso National Lottery. The spam filter on my account picks up most of them and after they’ve been screened by MI5, I’m only troubled by a trickle. Now Facebook is getting in on the act. Hardly a week goes by when I don’t receive a private message from ladies in faraway lands looking for love and, no doubt, bowled over by my sharp wit, winning smile and Judy Garland vinyls. This is the kind of thing:

“Hello Am linda, i saw your profile today and became interested in you, i will like to know you the more, and i want you to send an email to my mail so that i can give you my picture for you to know whom i am. Here is my email address (xxxxxx{at} yahoo.de) I believe we can move from here. I am waiting for your reply in my mail don’t send it in the site. Remember the distance or color does not matter but love matters allot in life Note!!! that am not always online on facebook, so do not contact me in facebook contact me directly in my email address at (xxxxxx{at} yahoo.de)”

“hello, My name is Alina, I saw your profile here as i was just browsing through facebook, I will be much pleased to have communication with you,I have a very important thing to discuss with you please reply me on my email address:(xxxxxx outlook com) because am not always on facebook but we can communicate through my private email ID, i will send my pictures to you and more details about me. God bless you.”

Spot the similarity? Me too. Whether it is just an attempt to scam me (and a thousand and one others) out of my bank account details or a genuine international mating game for the lost and lonely, you’d think they’d do their homework first before barking up the wrong tree.

Spamalot

Pay Day LoansGenerally, I enjoy this blogging malarkey. I’m little troubled by the cyber-trolls and infobahn ne’er do wells. But, one tedious aspect of blogging is the endless stream of spam attacks – over 34,000 so far. If only I got that amount of genuine interest. Most get picked up by WordPress’ spam filter but a few still sneak through. I receive an eclectic range of spam – the collective weaknesses, desires, vices and foibles of humanity are laid bare in Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic and Chinese (and probably in Runic if I bothered to decipher) mixed in with the endless machine-generated auto-babble. I could develop RSI just from the repetitive deletes. Since our return to Blighty, I’ve noticed an alarming increase in the number of dodgy comments from pay day loan companies (parasites, actually). These micro loans are designed to lure the financially embarrassed as they struggle from one wage to the next. Shooting ducks spring to mind. There’s a recession on. Some people are short of the readies and easily seduced. I looked up one of the more well-known lenders who advertise on the box. Their ‘representative APR’ is 2414%. Yes, you read right – two thousand, four hundred and fourteen per cent. I hear the ConDems intend to cap the rates these lenders charge – this year, next year, sometime never. These smiley cyber-sharks in sharp suits don’t need to send in the heavies to bully the desperate. They can afford to drop a few pounds and a couple of percent and still be quids in.