Buying a lottery ticket?

Yesterday, I took at shot at spammers and scammers sending text messages. I referenced my “Response to Spammers” posts but there’s another important area where spam and scam messages accumulate.

It’s in email. I have three or four different email accounts that I used for different purposes and the spammers and scammers have found them all. One of them is really interesting because I don’t think that I’ve ever sent messages from it. I use it to accept blog posts that I subscribe to so there will be a number of blog hosts that know about it. After all, nothing is really secure these days, is it?

I mean, just listen to the man behind the mask.

OPP probing possible hack of Ontario vax portal: Ford

Back to me.

There is one Gmail account that I’ve used for years and so it comes as no surprise that it’s the biggest destination for these messages. I think we all have had the advice not to read the messages and click on the links. Just like with text messages.

Gmail is great; these things just go to a Spam Folder and in theory, I could just let them sit there and they supposedly expire in 30 days. I’m tempted to do that except sometimes Gmail is too aggressive with tagging messages as spam. So, I do have to take a gander through there to make sure that nothing good gets trapped. Ironically, or not, the biggest source of misplaced messages are Computer Science services that I subscribe too. I always thought that those associations were positive. <grin>

It seems to me that the best spam messages would be those that actually look legitimate and hoodwink you into following the link embedded in them. At times though, I wonder. It’s like they’re deliberately bad to make it easier for Gmail to identify them and send them to the time out folder.

For example, this one would be intriguing – who wouldn’t want a $750 gift

Except that the message immediately under it said

Was there a rush on $750 gift cards?

I guess so

Even for gas – we all know that prices are high now so is this a bargain?

And, do the mathematics. This buys a LOT of Big Macs

Later, a reminder, they really want me to have those Big Macs

Maybe there’s a message there from numerology?

Or, maybe I should just go out and get a lottery ticket and play 5-7-50-57-70-75. I wonder if there’s a lottery somewhere that would take those numbers?

Advertisement