An Honest Spammer?
Is this the first case of an honest spammer, or is it just a case of incredible cosmic irony? You decide…
Here is a screenshot of a typical ‘pump-and-dump-scam‘ spam e-mail spotted by my colleague Darren, today:
A larger version can be found here.
As you can see it is a typical spam e-mail offering stocks that the spammers/scammers have bought and are trying to inflate before they dump them and make a profit, leaving all the other new investors out of pocket as a result of their actions.
However, that is not what is important in this case.
Did you notice the chunk of text below the ‘—’?
This is taken from news sites, so should be topical news at the time the spam e-mail is being created. This type of text is added to try and get the spam past anti-spam filters, but in most cases it doesn’t work. But, in this case the final news piece added is just so ironic, that you almost think it had to be added on purpose, just to raise a smile, if nothing else.
I have highlighted the pertinent section of the e-mail to make it clear which news item I’m on about.
So, what do you think, is it a case of cosmic irony, karma, fate, etc. Or, is it a case of a spammer honestly trying to warn the recipient? Nah, scratch that, there are no spammers with that level of concern for their victims, they are only interested in how much money they can make for themselves; worrying about swamping the internet and users mailboxes with the ‘crud‘ they are peddling just doesn’t come into the equation.
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