Internet Defense Technology

A few more fun ones:

• If Barack Obama Is An Oreo, What Is John Mclaughlin?
• Steve Jobs Names God As Successor.
• Would you like to be my husband?
• John Edwards Admits Fathering Clay Aiken’s Baby!
• John McCain Takes the Gold in Olympics
• Batman & Robin: We’re Gay. Watch the video
• Angelina Jolie Set To Destroy Own Vagina
• msnbc.com - BREAKING NEWS: McDonald’s Happy Meals In San Francisco To Include Gay Marriage License
• BREAKING NEWS: Polar Bear Finds Yoga Great For Flexibility, But Murder On The Balls

A few more subject lines for us to enjoy (again from Twitter):

• FBI agents patrol Facebook!
• Ryan Seacrest survives California shark attack
• Paris Hilton Infested with Cockroaches
• Obama has middle eastern descent. Disregard my flirting email to your girlfriend.
• Mad woman screams at man
• Beijing postpones Olympics due to McCain-Dalai Lama meeting BUY COCK PILLS HERE
• Man caught eating remains of tiger
• Lindsey Lohan died in car crash. Video.
• For: advertising Paris Hilton’s mom takes offense at McCain’s humor
• Switzerland to be swallowed by black hole

All of these were collected from twitter subject lines (seems to be growing every time). Still seeing a lot of celebrity or news type of headlines:

• Paris Hilton wins Pulitzer prize (my favorite)
• Thieving monkeys ‘out of control’ in northeast India (runner up)
• Unemployed To Be Used For Soup
• Superhero needs herbal help, too!
• flex, agile adoption
• I’m jealous of your extremely sweet email address.
• Gay Bishop Was A Wrestling Pro
• 2008 Presidential Election Results Leaked
• Paris Hilton lectures on Dickens and Dostoyevskey
• Paris Hilton To Operate New Atom Smasher
• Madonna’s Former Home Destroyed By Jesus
• Ronald Reagan Prime Suspect in Bank Robbery
• Enchant my mail copulation organ
• Spongebob Denies Reports That Hes Gay
• The truth about ghosts finally revealed
• God Destorys Boise For Not Being Gay Enough
• President Bush’s iPod, The Complete Playlist
• To protrude and serve! (viagra email)
• Get all your meds without the need for a prescription
• Obscure your real email address from bots which harvest them to spam
• Serial killer loves to party
• Madonna Sued For Sexual Harassment And Accent
• latest video games can help cure surgical errors
• Monkey shoots trainer with tranquilzer
• Laptops explode with over usage

I have so much fun going through the spam and seeing all the “great” subject lines and one line email spam people send. Here are some more good ones for you (I try to stay original and not repeat the ones I already listed and pick the good ones, not just all the stupid ones):

• Stand tall stand strong, voices that care are crying from from your pants. (My favorite)
• Divorce Reasons. Beasts Implicated.
• Enlarge Love Luger?
• denounces jezebel
• latina excellent holes vaginodynia
• We Fix Your Organism
• Go suck on a live hand grenade

I also found this which was funny: Top 30 Viagra SPAM Email Subject Lines

Some more email spam subject lines I have seen:

• Sperms of Endearment
• Megan Fox Victoria’s Secret Shoot
• I apologize for the unsolicited email, but thought it less obtrusive than a phone call
• Five hobbies women find sexy
• New message for you. waited fiefs.
• Eminen found dead in disco toilet

Subject lines:

• Saddam Hussein found dead
• What a stupid face you have here
• Your email mail has won yahoo prize of the year 2008
• How to grab boobies
• Beautiful samples of grandeur
• Barb you look so stupid
• If you can read this, email marketing works
• Dear Respected One
• Dear Client! Please update your informations.
• You look stupid
• Bill Gates is giving away his money and will be sued if he doesn’t
• This email is not intended to be spam

They definitely never rest do they, some of these seem such a waste to send around. But I guess sending email spam around doesn’t cost much to the big spammers.

You can be pretty sure you are looking at spam if the subject line includes any of the following:

• The word “free”
• The word “viagra”
• The words “you won”
• The word “lottery”
• The word “[Subject]” - sometimes it is () around the word or other symbols
• Any mention of prescription drugs
• Any mention of cheap watches
• Any mention of cheap jewelry
• Any mention of body parts
• Anything of a sexual or explicit nature
• Words with numbers of funny characters in the middle of the word, like “V1agra”

I have gotten asked why someone sending email would put a number of funny character in the middle of a word on the subject line.

This is an attempt to get passed the spam filter. Spammers know that some spam filters mainly look at keywords. So if the program is looking for “viagra” then it will miss “v1agra”.

Of course, there is spam that doesn’t fall into one of the above as well, so you can’t just use the above rules. Our Total Mail Defense spam filter looks at much more than keywords, so we catch all these attempts too.

Want more survey results for my Email Spam Survey, will only take a few minutes if you don’t mind.

I have seen three reports from twitter of a spam message with that subject line getting through.

See http://twitter.com/Romie/.

What do people think they are going to get out of sending this message around.

Just told someone recently that spammers try to send out as many messages as possible so that maybe one person out of tens or hundreds of thousands of people will click and they can make money.

Still, what is the deal with that subject line?

Update:

I keep finding more and more people getting this email (like jsjohnst and dwink on Twitter).

Another possibility for sending out this email is the idea of testing email addresses to see which one will bounce and which one will go through to a real email address. The ones that don’t bounce are then real email addresses.

I haven’t seen one of these (if someone wants to send it to me, let me know) but there maybe a small image embedded in the email and if you download it (view the spam message with images turned on), you let the spammers know that it is a real email address.

Subject lines and the “from” for a bunch of email spam and hoaxes (don’t get caught) that made it through my “hotmail spam filter”:

o0o

Saves 70c Per Gallon On-Gas
From: Gas Secrets (noreply@fierybasket.net)

o0o

Increase your salary with an online college degree
From: OnlineDegrees@amppromotion.com

o0o

Rebate Processor Position - Easy Work - Great Pay
From: Rebate Processor (RebateProcessor@monocytic.com)

o0o

Re: Search Results - Visa Card for you!
From: NewCreditEra@baseresponse.com

o0o

Confirm receipt of $10,000 Scholarship Offer KHH-6875540
From: SchoolRewards (school@jhdskjd.com)

o0o

250K for your Business as little as 36 Hours
From: Need Capital? (noreply@noisytired.net)

o0o

Approval Finder
From: Approval Finder (ApprovalFinder@invirtualbusiness.com)

o0o

StudentFinancialAid
From: OnlineStudentFinancialAid@eserviceagency.com

o0o

RobertG.Allen
From: RobertG.Allen@whitefishes.com

o0o

Save 70cents/gallon on gas
From: Gas Secrets (noreply@comfortstature.net)

Saw just today (doesn’t include less dangerous spam)

1) From: William Vusi

Part of it said: “I was doing my annual auditing in our bank this year I
discovered there is an account opened in this bank far back in the 80’s
and since then nobody has operated it. So i went through some old
files in the records, I discovered that if I do not remit this money out
urgently it would be forfeited. Moreover, as an auditor i won’t be able to
claim this amount.

“The owner of this account is Mr. Andreas B. Smith, a foreigner and a
Miner at Kruger Gold Company. A Geologist by profession, who died in
1990.”

2) From: membersavings@passporttofunplus.com

Subject line: Your Passport to Fun+ Membership Information - UPCOMING CHARGE

Big alarming headline that says: “UNLESS YOU CANCEL, YOUR CREDIT
CARD ACCOUNT WILL BE CHARGED.”

Then: “You’re receiving this email because you accepted a special offer to save money through the Passport to Fun+SM savings service.” Which I haven’t.

Original article on IDT Blog about email spam