Weird Spam Subjects: Unsolicited Emails Explained

[Nothing000]

Do you guys get spam that has subjects that just make no sense. I get about 10 of these a day. The subject says stuff like: "caps here, and to make bows th...", "be Kristina tread ", "some sole a proximate".
What is the deal with these? I guess that the goal is to get people confused about what the email is about, in the hopes that the people will be curious and open the email exposing them to the advertisement within.
I guess subjects like that get past anti-spam software better too.
This is a pretty smart strategy for spammers I guess. Do you guys get these?

 

[DaveC426913]

More B than A: the intent is to slip past automated spam filters.

I have seen them change just recently. Now I'm getting all sorts of stock market tips.

 

[Doc Al]

This is a pretty smart strategy for spammers I guess. Do you guys get these?

It's semi-smart. It gets past the automated filters, but it also makes it very easy for a human to spot spam. (I get plenty.)

 

[Moonbear]

I don't get much spam, though the newsletters from my professional societies all come in with a tag on them saying "possible spam." I need to find out what our IT department is up to and inform them they are tagging things that aren't spam, just in case they were planning to implement something to actually filter it out.

 

[Gale]

i've been getting lots of those spams that are like


"Dr. Ms Abigale,

I regret to inform you that your dear uncle, king of Backelstonia has just died recently. You have been named the sole heir. please send all bank account information to us at Beans and Co Law Offices and we will send his millions directly to your account."

or they say

"Dear Ms Abigale,

it has been brought to our attention that you a very wise individual and would be interesting in making a large sum of money. recently a Mr Big of Gymbia has died and left a large estate to his heirs. unfortunately, these heirs have thus far been unlocatable. our company is willing to offer you a large percentage of this estate if you're willing to cooperate with us. we would like to claim you as the sole heir to his estate, and taking only a small portion out for out company, will hand over that estate to you. please enclose account information if interested"

the first time i got one, i thought it was cute cause it seemed so formal and the english was bad. but the english has gotten better, and i get too many for them to be cute. some don't even ask for my info, so i don't get where the scam is. i even replied back once, and they replied again asking to set up a business appt and letting me know they'd get me at the airport and blah.

 

[Nothing000]

You should email them back and act very interested. And tell them that they need to fly into your town so you can sign the deal and give them the info. Say you are bed ridden or something like that. Tell them you will pick them up at the airport. Then get ahold of your local news team, and have them expose them at the airport. That would be great.

 

[enigma]

Yeah, except they will have twenty things go wrong with them getting on the plane which would require you to send them money first.

 

[turbo]

Here is a sweet one! A couple of years back, I put my Harley up for sale on a morotcycle ad website. I got a very excited email from a nice, polite guy who said that my Road King was exactly what he had been looking for, down to the accessories and the color scheme. He said he was working abroad for the next couple of months, but wanted the bike waiting for him when he got back to the states. I gave him my address and he Fed-Exed me a cashier's check for the full amount plus $5100 with a request that I send the excess to his agent, who would make arrangements to come pick up the bike, etc. He specified that I should use Western Union, so the guy could have the money that same day. Instead, I called Integrated Payment Systems and asked for their security and fraud department. I described the check to the fraud guy in detail, including all the security features that I could see, and gave him the check #. He said "we never issued that check." Apparently, someone in Nigeria has a really lucrative business going in fake cashier's checks and they buy really expensive items with no intention of ever getting them - they just want the overpayment sent through Western Union in such a manner that they can pick it up anonymously at about any WU location. It must work a fraction of the time...

 

[tribdog]

that's a good one

 

[moose]

"Pia- Just do her"

...

a little straight forward?

 

[Doc Al]

...but it also makes it very easy for a human to spot spam.

For example, here are selected subject lines from this morning's spam pile (all from unrecognized senders):

Re: magnesium
a godson, Mirabelle it's unit
arthur, the sandman
it's antigone, Bernarr in small
ivanhoe, on wetland
Re: Have spell the playback british
see inhuman, Flint a wrongdo
or wah, Daniel or precocity
it Andi, some seagram
it's Harrie, some daphne​

Now why in the world would I ever open one of these?

 

[Pengwuino]

Now why in the world would I ever open one of these?

I get hte same crap. It definitely gets by Thunderbird and Comcast's spam filters.

Say you are bed ridden or something like that. Tell them you will pick them up at the airport.

Yah I don't think they are THAT stupid

Here is a sweet one! A couple of years back, I put my Harley up for sale on a morotcycle ad website. I got a very excited email from a nice, polite guy who said that my Road King was exactly what he had been looking for, down to the accessories and the color scheme. He said he was working abroad for the next couple of months, but wanted the bike waiting for him when he got back to the states. I gave him my address and he Fed-Exed me a cashier's check for the full amount plus $5100 with a request that I send the excess to his agent, who would make arrangements to come pick up the bike, etc. He specified that I should use Western Union, so the guy could have the money that same day. Instead, I called Integrated Payment Systems and asked for their security and fraud department. I described the check to the fraud guy in detail, including all the security features that I could see, and gave him the check #. He said "we never issued that check." Apparently, someone in Nigeria has a really lucrative business going in fake cashier's checks and they buy really expensive items with no intention of ever getting them - they just want the overpayment sent through Western Union in such a manner that they can pick it up anonymously at about any WU location. It must work a fraction of the time...

There are "419 scams".

http://www.secretservice.gov/alert419.shtml

Theres something about the Nigerian law that allows this kind of crap to run wild. I ran across a forum full of anti-419'ers! They basically pretend to be suckered into these schemes and absolutely screw over the people doing the scheme. It turns out a lot of these scam-perpetrators will do ANYTHING (i've seen threads full of the funniest REAL pictures of these guys like writing on their head or doing insanely stupid stuff just so they can keep the scam going). These anti-419'ers are even more creative in keeping the scam going while humiliating the scammer and not paying a dime as the scammers are in making up BS.

One guy had the mother of all pranks. It involved buying goods with fake money pretty much. Scammer wanted to order some laptops for way above retail price but he had to have them immediately and offered to send fedex over to pick up the stuff and would send a, of course, fake check. Another aspect was something like... he said they would be sent to the same country for some "agent" to pick up. What actually happened, of course, is that the "agent" was just a re-routing person who then sent the "laptops" to nigeria. Well, needless to say, it was hilarious. The guy verifies the check is fake, fedex comes around and he sends him a huuuuuuuge box full of "laptops". Well, the "laptops" were a collection of junk the guy had around his computer store (trash basically). The guy in Nigeria gets it and he goes nuts. He says he's going to send hitmen to kill him and that the hitmen are outside his shop right now and that he knows the president and will have the president personally kill him. The scamee repeatedly says "no please don't kill me!" as a joke and says he will send the real laptops next time. Well, fedex comes back (oh and hte nigerian is paying alllllllll shipping charges) and what shall he load the package with this time? That's right, a washing machine! (not working of course). Well he sends that off and there's this continual back and forth ... hilarious emails... guy must have spent thousands of dollars shipping crap... while the computer store owner laughed his butt off :)

Another guy was actually able to get money from the scammer! I forget how... but he donated the money to charity, freaken hilarious.

 

[Moonbear]

For example, here are selected subject lines from this morning's spam pile (all from unrecognized senders):

Re: magnesium
a godson, Mirabelle it's unit
arthur, the sandman
it's antigone, Bernarr in small
ivanhoe, on wetland
Re: Have spell the playback british
see inhuman, Flint a wrongdo
or wah, Daniel or precocity
it Andi, some seagram
it's Harrie, some daphne​

Now why in the world would I ever open one of these?

Are these sent out by actual spammers, or is there some email virus/worm thing that's generating random titles, so some unwittingly infected person's computer is just sending stuff out like that? (Then again, I guess you wouldn't want to open it to find out.) This sounds like some silly random-sentence program one of my friends had when we were in high school. It would just choose words at (somewhat) random from a database, and make sentences out of them. Some were hilarious, and some made absolutely no sense at all.

 

[Nothing000]

Sounds like a program that randomly puts words together. It seems like if a person were to put the words together they would at least put them together in such a way that they make sense.

 

[ShawnD]

Do you guys get spam that has subjects that just make no sense. I get about 10 of these a day. The subject says stuff like: "caps here, and to make bows th...", "be Kristina tread ", "some sole a proximate".

I get emails like that, but the entire email is nonsensical. The title means nothing. The body means nothing. No products are listed. The email has no links. The return address is fake (look at what smtp server sent it).
I don't understand what the point of sending these is.

 

[Nothing000]

Ya, I get emails sometimes that are just blank. The title is blank, and the entire email is blank. I have received a few that were written in a white colored font, so I had to highlight the email to invert the colors to read them, and they made sense but they were like crazy stories. They made sense in the sense that the sentences where written with correct syntax and stuff like that. But they didn't make sense because the stuff written looked like it was written by someone on some acid. It was just crazy rambling. I think I might have gotten three or four of these when I had AOL.

 

[Mk]

You guys read your spam?? Hasn't anybody ever told you, that you catch viruses, trojan horses, and worms by opening it?

BTW I don't get any spam, and never have. Do you guys just give out your email address to anyone?? Also, I have 4 levels of email addresses, depending on what it is

Lowest is 4th, its xxxxxxx@mailinator.com, for subscriptions that I'll never use. Why do I sign up? http://mailinator.com
3rd is hotmailalternateaddress@hotmail.com, for subscriptions, junk mail, stuff you don't want
2nd is Mks@physicsforums.com, stuff I might want to read, subscriptions, junk mail
1st is... well I can't tell you, its only for email I care about, and I don't get but two or three a day, and all those PF thread subscriptions.

 

[Pengwuino]

You don't get viruses simply by opening the mails. You normally have to run an attachment.

 

[Jelfish]

You don't get viruses simply by opening the mails. You normally have to run an attachment.

I believe you can get viruses by just opening them if the email is in HTML and has graphics that are actually remotely hosted scripts. I don't know the details though.

 

[Mk]

And the attachments can automatically run, without your consent or knowledge.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I've gotten those ones that are like dada poetry or something. No ads, links, HTML, pics, attachments... nothing but weird nonsense.

 

[Kazza_765]

You should email them back and act very interested. And tell them that they need to fly into your town so you can sign the deal and give them the info. Say you are bed ridden or something like that. Tell them you will pick them up at the airport. Then get ahold of your local news team, and have them expose them at the airport. That would be great.

http://www.419eater.com/html/letters.htm

Check these out, they are hilarious. Some of them actually trick the scammer into sending them money. One pretended to be Gillian Anderson, then had the scammer book her a luxury suite at the Hilton in Nigeria (they actually called up and verified that it had been booked and payed for). They also had the scammer waiting for them at the airport when their "flight" came in, holding up a sign saying "I Love Fags".

 

[tribdog]

I only read the first one, but it's hilarious. That's a real tattoo the guy got

 

[BobG]

I need to reset my junkmail settings. I've always wanted to get a Nigerian scam letter and never have ... at least until I checked my junkmail.

Geez, over the past year I've won four lotteries (590,983 GPB, 1,000,000 Euros, 2.5 Million GBP, and 950,000 Euros) and have received an Iraqi scam letter for 30% of $15,000,000, a United Arab Emirates scam letter for 30% of 15,000,000 GBP, a South African scam letter for a whopping $14.7 million dollars with no mention of having to share, plus an undisclosed amount of CASH delivered right to my front doorstep from someone in Nigeria. You know that's got to be a whopping amount of money if they won't even disclose the amount ... unless quality control for scam letters is going downhill and they just forgot.

Hopefully the Nigerian will bring me a 330 lb trunk worth of cash! (15,000,000 dollars in hundred dollar bills).

But since the loss of my family, I have found a new desire to assist helpless families. I have been helping orphans in orphanage/ motherless homes. I have donated some money to orphans in Sudan, South Africa, Cameroon, Brazil and some Asian countries. Before I became ill, I kept Fifteen Million Great British Pounds Sterling (15,000,000.00 GBP) in a long-term deposit account in a finance/security company.

Presently, I’m in a hospital where I have been undergoing treatment for esophageal cancer. I have since lost my ability to talk and my doctors have told me that I have only a few months to live. It is my last wish to see this money distributed to charity organizations. Because relatives and friends have plundered so much of my wealth since my illness, I cannot live with the agony of entrusting this huge responsibility to any of them.

Please, I beg you in the name of God to help me collect the deposit and the interest accrued from the company and distributes it amongst charity organizations. Your share of will be 30% of the total money for your help and for any cost you incur during the process of collecting and distributing the money to charity organizations.

I feel guilty collecting 30% when the money is going to charities. I think I'll only keep 20%.

I am a Manager of FNB bank in South Africa, I am

seeking for your Co-operation to present you to my bank

as the next of kin/will beneficiary
to my deceased client, Before his death, he has a bank

balance with my
bank to the tune of {$14.7M}, Mr. Morris Thompson, a

businessman based
in South Africa, died since 2000. In an air, crash

along with his wife
on 1st of January 2000.

Obviously a casualty of that Y2K disaster when the computers on every airborne airliner in the world crashed - literally!

I am writing you in absolute confidence primarily to seek your assistance to transfer our cash of Fifteen Million Dollars (US$15,000.000.00) cash bond which is safely secured in the vault of a Security brokerage Firm .The said Security Finance Company also has branches in Europe whereby the money can also be secured.

You will help us collect the funds from the Security Company as I cannot travel out from Iraq at the moment because of certain conditions which I will explain to you latter if we work together(my traveling documents are not yet complete). The fall of Saddam Hussein has brought destruction / Hell to our great country and everything is practically difficult now and opportunities are closing up, the new government is trying to frustrate our businesses.

Damn this war! War is hell!

And, finally, my coveted Nigerian scam letter:

You have to help the diplomats to get (yellow Tag Paper)so that the customs and immigration will not stop them in Airport, for security reason you are advice to follow the rules and regulation of the diplomats for easy collection of the consignment, you have to welcome the diplomatic agent, to enable them deliver the Consignment to you immediately, be informed that as soon as the diplomats obtain the above name certificate they will deliver the Consignment to your doorstep.

Darn. The deadline to respond for all of these has expired. I really need to reset my junk mail settings. At least maybe I can still get a date with Sandra.

My name is sandra,i saw your profile today and i became interested in you,i will also like to know you the more,and i want you to send an email to my email address so i can give you my picture for you to know whom i am.

And every single one of these scam letters was more interesting than the 248 e-mails from Barak Obama (or his wife or his campaign staff) sitting in my junk mail folder!

 

[Evo]

I need to reset my junkmail settings. I've always wanted to get a Nigerian scam letter and never have ... at least until I checked my junkmail.

Hey if you go to the free dating sites, you will be bombarded by Russian women that love you and want to marry you today, just from reading your two sentence profile, as long as you say you are in the US. Just pay for them and their family to come to the US and they will never ever leave you. A male friend of mine gets at least one of these offers a day.

 

[binzing]

I just get ED pill spam and Hotmail's spam catcher gets it.

 

[Moonbear]

Hey if you go to the free dating sites, you will be bombarded by Russian women that love you and want to marry you today, just from reading your two sentence profile, as long as you say you are in the US. Just pay for them and their family to come to the US and they will never ever leave you. A male friend of mine gets at least one of these offers a day.

All I get now are spams that have something to do with some product for coding insurance forms for OB/GYN practices. I have NO idea what mailing list I got on for those, but they don't stop and our crappy email spam filter doesn't have the ability to blacklist an address, you can only fish things out of the junkmail folder to whitelist them. The director of our IT department wants to migrate to a real email software too, but I'm not sure what obstacle she's encountering that's keeping it from happening (there's at least one more level of IT above her that implements the stupid rules that nobody understands).

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

The funniest spam scam I have ever heard of...
http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/2008/02/19/hit-man-scam-spam-returns.htm

When I first heard about it though they said that there was no way of even contacting the sender so I figured it was just a joke. I guess it's back now though and the FBI are investigating.

For those too lazy to follow a link: people have been getting spam telling them that someone hired a hitman to kill them and that they ought to pay up unless they want the hitman to proceed with the job.

 

[JasonRox]

I don't get much spam, though the newsletters from my professional societies all come in with a tag on them saying "possible spam." I need to find out what our IT department is up to and inform them they are tagging things that aren't spam, just in case they were planning to implement something to actually filter it out.

I sent an e-mail to myself (file), and it was sent to junk mail.