nags of a similar ilk

I received an email from an acquaintance of mine. He's one of the first organizers of Bewaro-the-Sombrero, an ultimate (frisbee) hat tournament held at the end of each year for the last 10+ years, usually somewhere close to or in San Mateo. Dave is the person who taught me the term "sucky suck," which I have used for the last 10+ years, and taught my mom to use, too.

I'm including it here because at first, I couldn't be 100% sure the email wasn't a spam email. Dave COULD have been in Africa. He COULD have lost his passport. He COULD need money. The email was sent to an address that I had given to ONLY Dave, so I couldn't be 100% sure the email was spam. The language is weird, though.

I couldn't be 100%, but I could be 97% sure the email was spam. I became 100% sure when I googled for "empowering youth to fight racism" in quotes, and found another email (but only one, oddly enough) posted that had the exact same wording.

So that the next person who googles won't have the same problem I did, here's the email. I'm speculating it's being sent by a virus that sits on the user's computer and looks at old emails, the to: and from:, maybe from gmail? and spams based on previous email headers. Though, other than affecting spam filters, I'm not sure what this message is supposed to accomplish.

The email reads:

Date:   	Wed, 8 Oct 2008 15:20:22 +0100
From:  	 	David W-------------
Subject:  	Please Respond Urgently (I Need Your Help)

How are you doing today?
  I am sorry I didn't inform you about my traveling to Africa for a program
called "Empowering Youths to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS and Poverty. The
program is taking place in three major countries in Africa which are Ghana,
South Africa and Nigeria . It has been a very sad and bad moment for me, the
present condition I find myself in is very hard for me to explain.
    I am really stranded in Nigeria cos I forgot my little bag  where my money,
passport, documents and other valuable things are kept in the Taxi on my way to
the Hotel where i am lodged, I am facing a hard time here because I have no
money on me. I am now owing a hotel bill of $1,500 and they want me to pay the
bill else they will have to seize my other bag and hand me over to the Hotel
Management., I need this help from you urgently to help me back home, I need you
to help me with the hotel bill and i will also need $1000 to feed and
help myself
back home so please can you help me with a sum of $2500 to sort out my problems
here? I need this help so much and on time because i am in a terrible and tight
situation here.
     I am sending you this e-mail from the hotel's cafe and I only have 10
min to do so, I will appreciate what so ever you can afford to send me for now
and I promise to pay back your money as soon as i return home so please let me
know on time so that i can forward you the details you need to transfer the
money through Money Gram or Western Union.

My Regards
David.W--------- 

As I was checking my email this morning, I noticed this email come through:

Now, I don't know any Nathan Montgomery, and I haven't been any place recently where I would have met someone new, say at a conference or meet-up or networking or developer event, and forgotten that I had met this said Nathan. Although meeting new people is fun, I'm 100% sure this wasn't a new person I met.

I recognize the purpose of spam subject lines is to lure the recipient into opening the email. Given that I read my email in a mail reader that is beyond old, I'm not particularly worried about accidently unleashing a virus onto my system, so the fact that the message is clearly a spam message with that subject line doesn't bother me.

However, there's that bit of flattery in that subject line that just begs that message to be opened.

"I find you interesting."

Could there possibly be a better pickup line? To have someone find me interesting has to be one of the most flattering compliments I think I could receive.

I think I'll leave that email a mystery, unopened.

If you're going to send me spam, for the love of your god, at least make it somewhat believable.

Today is the saddest day of ever.

Today is the first day I have received an unsolicited commercial spam email to my main email address. I use throw away email addresses for my commercial dealings, meaning I know when some company has a virus on their systems or has sold my email address. It's not hard to figure out when the address kittsprint shows up on electronic goods emails that Sprint sold my address, or when kittameritrade shows up in a spam email that Ameritrade has a virus on their systems.

This second one actually happened, with kittameritrade being my second email address I used with Ameritrade. The first time I reported the virus on their systems, they insisted the problem wasn't within their systems, it was within mine. I asked them to switch email addresses, and four months later the new email address was getting financial spam to it.

After getting the run around from Ameritrade again with the virus in their systems, I reported their breach of privacy policy and leak of personal information to the SEC. Now THAT got Ameritrade moving.

I couldn't help but think, "You know, people, not everyone uses Microsoft products, and that's a good thing. Homogeny is a cracker's dream, especially when all of the products are flawed."

I have to admit, my run lasted a long, long time. I've used my personal email address for about eight years without spam to it, and without any email spam filters on it. In this day and age, that's pretty good.

I guess it's time to switch to one of the other five top level domains I have for my last name. Since hodsden.org is being spammed, how does hodsden.com sound?

Today I received an email with the subject:

Subject: We cure any desease!

My first thought when I saw the subject was, "Huh. Except stupidity."