I’m talking about spam. Everyone has to suffer while some jerk thinks he’s going to be a millionaire if only he gets enough people to click and give up their bank passwords.
Really, I shouldn’t complain. The people who generate spam are probably the dumbest on the planet. Oh, they’re a little clever, but most of them don’t speak English, which is obvious when they form a sentence that nobody in the English-speaking world would say. That always tips me off that it’s spam.
Then there’s this:
I’m sure you can see what’s wrong with those emails right away. They just pour into my inbox, all pretending to be important loan apps that I might click on and fill out for some free money… or whatever. Sometimes it’s Costco, or ACE Hardware, etc. But they always blast my inbox with enough of them that I can’t miss them. And therefore, I know they are spam. Like this one:
I’m using a hosting company, so in order to set up a good spam filter, I have to pay a monthly fee and redirect my inbox to the spam service, then back again. It’s easier just to set up manual filters. So, no biggie. I usually just delete the things until they start coming in too fast. Then I resort to the filter rules.
Here’s the thing, and I’m surprised this hasn’t happened yet. Someday, these guys are going to get smart, or they’ll figure out how to generate these things with ChatGPT or Copilot, etc. They’ll connect to personal information on the Internet and join that with some subject and email that look real. They could even scrape the real logos that companies use, or even duplicate a real company flyer and put their own links inside.
Thankfully, these guys are still idiots (I hope they’re not reading this blog right now).
I’ve almost been caught on that Facebook scam. The one where there’s important news about someone you know (that they got from someone’s friend’s list). Once the user clicks on the image, a login box appears. It’s a Facebook-looking box, but I froze. Primarily because I haven’t manually logged into Facebook in some time, but also… and here’s the clue: I’m already logged into Facebook. Yeah, that’s how I managed to doom-scroll and come upon their stupid image. I also know which one of my relatives gave away their Facebook Password to some spammer. They’re usually clueless as to how it happened. Fortunately, I haven’t seen that one in over a year. Maybe Facebook has algorithms to detect those better.
At my workplace, they perform random phishing tests. Those are a dead giveaway, though, because I don’t use my work email for anything. When one of those shows up, with the banner that says it came from an external source, I start to hover over the links that say “YOU MUST CLICK NOW!” It’s usually one of those long, GUID-looking things with a strange domain name. Not really a good test, but don’t tell IT that. I have better things to do with my time at work than figure out if I’m being tested.
That brings me to my next thought: It’s too bad there isn’t a central place where you can verify your career choice. A place where the spammers can cross-reference their list. Then they know that I’m a software engineer, know all the tricks, and could probably come up with a better mousetrap than they’ve thought up. They’re just wasting their time and bandwidth targeting me. Of course, then everyone in the world would register as an IT or SDEV person just to get rid of spam, and I’m pretty sure that someone who isn’t smart enough to check their spelling in their spam message also doesn’t think about narrowing their target audience to those who have a higher chance of clicking. Nope, they’re just sending a thousand messages to everyone’s inbox every day.
Finally, I wonder how much of the Internet’s resources are wasted on these jerks. Those and the rogue bots out there. I bet if those were all shut down, the Internet would be blazing fast.