Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Does ANYONE Ever Answer These?

This is the text from some spam I got today that cracks me up:

Hi, my dear friend I've been searching for a man of my dreams,
of my desire and I indeed hope that you are that person, and I have somehow fallen hopelessly and undeniably, though virtually in love with you. To be honest, I never thought I would ever utter those words, but now, they come forth effortlessly and with great sincerity. I'll be forever grateful to you if you show me just how shallow my life was. At last, I have a chance to give it depth and purpose. It would probably be better to tell you this during meeting in person, eyes to eyes, but I knew that the proper words would escape me. I wrote you this letter instead. Please answer me at ...

Why, why, why do people write and send this crapola? Of course that line of thought leads to the question of why does anyone read it? And here I am someone who read. I didn't open it though. (I didn't inhale?) My preview was on and this drivel was the email the cursor was on so I saw the first lines even as I was deleting. Does that at all protect my computer from getting worms or viruses or whatever? But that's yet another side issue. My main point is what is the purpose of these? How could anyone fall for it or find anything interesting enough to click the link? Surely it's code. It made me think back to when raves used to be held in different places - warehouses and such - and you'd have to find the address by putting together seemingly random info from a couple of different band posters that were stapled all over the city. (Um, and in case you are wondering - I had friends who were cool enough to know how to do all that. On my own, I'm sure I not only wouldn't have understood how to decipher the address - but I wouldn't have even known what a rave was.) Anyway - I figure this stuff is just some scattershot process to get people to porn sites - but for the life of me I can't imagine why anyone would go to the trouble of writing, sending, datamining for addresses, risking getting caught, etc. Where is the payoff - for anyone??
Mystery.

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