It’s not the fact of spam that astonishes me: It’s the range.
Let’s see what’s on offer today, shall we?
There are the one-time-good-deal financial offers.
I can have higher sales (“Of what?” I wonder) through social media marketing, if I just click on this link to send my credit card information.
I can update my account information if I just click on this link to send my personal information to a company with a trustworthy name.
I can have $15 million deposited to my bank account if I just click on this link to send my banking information to a bank with a famous-and-therefore-trustworthy name.
I can have an unbelievable business investment opportunity if I just click on this link to send my banking and personal and credit card information to Peter (clearly a Real Guy, with a name and everything).
And then there are the more personal opportunities.
I can order no-name pills for erectile dysfunction.
I can hook up with fake-name (but HOT!!) Russian/lesbian/Russian-lesbian lovers.
I can buy actual-brand-name sunglasses that will make me look hot.
I understand the sex, money, and sex-for-money pitches (with the emphasis on the money, these days, apparently based on my demographic), but sunglasses?
Sunglasses?
I mean, I can totally see making online deals for sex or money or sex-for-money with people who have approached me out of the blue using a form letter in regrettable English and an email address that doesn’t match their alleged company name, but don’t you have to try on sunglasses before you buy them? I know I do.
I mean, it just screams improbability, doesn’t it? What are the odds that anyone is going to go for that?
But that’s the joy of spam. The odds don’t have to be high, as long as the volume is.
Isabel
So, what is it you have against sunglasses?
Tom: I guess I’m just particular. (Some would say fussy.) (But not I.)
I don’t get spam. And can’t remember the last time I got any spam like those above. Most of them never, except for the occasional bank fraud ones from “banks” I don’t even have accounts in. So dumb. If they spent as much time trying to con people as having regular jobs…
However, I still have to dig YOUR blog (this one) out of my JUNK folder every Sunday no matter how many times I tell my Apple Computer you are not JUNK!
Barbara – Would you like to send me your banking information? I could send you a handy link . . .
I’d do it if your blog was subsequently
sent to INBOX, not JUNK. 😀
Barbara – Yes, firewalls can be hard to understand. I subscribe to a Library of Congress poem-a-day service. Most come through fine, but every once in a while my email provider throws a hissy fit and dumps several in a row into Junk email. And then it stops doing it. No idea why.
One question Isabel; have you ever met a pilot?
Sunglasses freaks! All of … them.
There must be a vulnerable demographic for every scam out there.
Vince – I can understand the obsession, but do you buy them online? Or from an email? Say it isn’t so.