Having had the same e-mail address for years and years, I accumulate quite a lot of Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail (aka spam) every day.
Happily, my e-mail provider has very effective spam filters in place, and I never see 95%+ of the spam that arrives in my account... it vanishes into my Bulk E-Mail folder, and I usually toss it sight-unseen. I do lose the occasional legitimate message from an actual human being this way, but if it's important, I figure they'll write back eventually.
Occasionally, however, I wade into the spam folder to see what's up. And an interesting picture emerges, of me as viewed by bulk-mail advertisers:
- I am obsessed with sex, particularly web-based pornography, including some of the more outré fetishes. (Principally, I seem to really have a thing for teenage web-cam girls, although roughly 10% of the cam-spam, which is interestingly right in line with Alfred Kinsey's famous estimate, is for web-cam guys.)
- Although obsessed with sex, I apparently also suffer from a severe case of erectile dysfunction, and am an excellent candidate for Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, etc. as well as "natural" remedies.
Amusingly, these drugs are often offered to me in "generic" form, which would puzzle and outrage their manufacturers, as all are still under extremely severe patent protection.
I can't read any of these names without recalling Seth Stevenson's trenchant observations:
"Viagra" is supposed to suggest vigor and Niagara. Ehhh. "Cialis" is supposed to suggest—well, I have no idea. And then there's "Levitra." I love this name. It sounds like the Harry Potter spell for summoning an erection. Levitra!
- Also, I have a really really small penis, which I desperately want to enlarge.
This is becoming depressing. I'm hooked on porn, and I have a small, flaccid member. This is not a good combination.
- Probably due to my impotence and porn addiction, I am depressed, anxious, and constantly in terrible physical pain, and thus need to buy Xanax, Prozac, Vicodin, etc. from Mexican pharmacies.
- I am also wrinkled, fat, and bald(ing), and need to address all of these situations immediately.
Well, okay. Even a blind hog finds a few acorns.
- Although (or perhaps because) I seem to have really poor credit (and thus am deluged with ads for secured credit cards and "Christian debt counseling" — do they do some kind of loaves-and-fishes thing with my bills?) I am apparently in the market for a dodgy, cut-rate mortgage with "no questions asked."
- I am aching to serve as a middleman for transactions involving members of the African economic aristocracy who are currently in strained financial positions.
- I love pirated software, and would be happy to give my credit card numbers to anonymous website operators in a former Soviet republic. Hey, $30 for Microsoft Office 2003! How can you beat that?
You get the picture. I would write more, but I have to go pop a little blue pill and give my secured Visa card number to a web-cam hooker.
Article comments
1 - Steve S
I am continually reminded by spam, almost daily, that I qualify for a new mortgage at the lowest rate in the world. My 'application' has been approved. So far, I must have had 5,000 applications approved that I never remember applying for!
I also guess I qualify for such a good mortgage because I'm not actually a homeowner.
oh, and the unsolicited stock tips that come my way. Each day there is a new stock on the verge of becoming the next ebay....
2 - bhw
Fun post, Barry!
But what's on your bookshelf, I wonder....
3 - Barry
Hey, I live in a rent-stabilized New York City apartment. The only mortgage I'm interested in is the one on the country house that I'm going to buy if I hit the Lotto.
And how could I forget the screwball stock tips? Of course, some of them are coming from my broker...
4 - Barry
BHW:
Currently finishing Neal Stephenson's "The System of the World," the third volume in his "Baroque Cycle." I've put quite an investment into Mr. Stephenson this year, having read almost 3000 pages of his prose in these three books.
Just read Harry G. Frankfurt's "On Bullshit," which I've blogged about over at enrevanche. And, due to a recent medical diagnosis, I am plowing through "Type II Diabetes: The First Year."
But what's on my bookshelves? Good God. We must have at least five or six hundred books in this little apartment. It's a Cautionary Tale... "When Writers Marry."
5 - Eric Olsen
hilarious Barry, I'm in a similar position with a long-term and very public email address. No filter from my provider, though. I am on the verge of finally giving up the ghost and moving
6 - Eli Watson
Dear Bloggers,
The link to this page actually showed up in an email from Google under news for 'Vicodin'. Until now this is the only non-related link I found in their announcements since I have been testing their news alerts on health related topics which has been several weeks now. I manage several health related sites and most of them have all spam filters disabled on the mail-server. The amount of unsolicited email I receive is yet very low.
I believe that people who receive spam often have their email stored in their browser which is easy for javascripts to read (and abuse). Especially if you have visited adult or rogue pharmacy websites malicious scripts likely tracked what pages you have been looking at and as a result you will receive targeted advertising (or what they think is targeted based on your browsing behaviour). Most emails will be regarding the most profitable medications such as Valium, Vicodin, Xanax, Lortab, Viagra, Hydrocodone and other popular drugs or adult keywords that may be of your interest or which you solely may have browsed for on a rainy day. Often several letters are replaced to prevent the emails from being blocked.
You may only have read an email for longer than 30 seconds advertising Vicodin ES to qualify as 'interested' and causing your email address to be logged and later on sold or used by the owner of that database. Often the emails include pictures or 1x1 pixels that are hosted on anonymous registered servers providing reports if and when you have opened the emails, how long you kept the email open for, if you clicked any of the links and more.
Recent research shows that the average computer is infected with over 20 different spyware programs and at least 2 viruses. This is clearly one of the main 'feeders' for spam.
Make sure to install programs such as ad-aware and spybot s&d in addition to your normal virus programs. If you have never used anti-spyware before you will be surprised with the results found on your computer. For advanced used there is a handy program named 'HijackThis' which enables you to remove entries from the system registry.
Most bloggers love to leave their email on websites not realizing that there are bots searching blogs to harvest email addresses so they can send emails targeting certain categories.
Don't post your main email on blogs and don't connect your email with your browser and you will notice that the amount of spam will be drastically reduced. Also don't submit your main email to free offers, newsletters, software registrations from companies you don't really know etc. You may be surprised to see the effect when creating a secondary email or if you already receive tons of spam create a new main email and keep the old one as secondary.
BTW: I received a link to this webpage in an email from Google, likely because someone mentioned the word Vicodin somewhere on this page and Google was under the impression that this site was providing relevant and up to date information in regards to this strong pain killer.
I decided to post this reply because spam techniques are very often used by fly-by pharmacies and by affiliates trying to make a quick buck. None of the websites I am affiliated with send spam, nor do they use malicious scripts or otherwise invade your privacy.
Have a Pain- & Spam Free Day,
Eli Watson
7 - gonzo marx
on another note..one to Barry..
i am in the middle of Confusion by Stephenson..my beloved signed copy..
having read all of his opther work, how ccould i resist..
have not picked up the final book yet...but it does give me something to look forward too
and thanx for the spam article..a fun read..
Excelsior!
8 - Steve S
Vicodin is mentioned in the post, and BlogCritics is a Google news source so Google probably figured it was an article about Vicodin.
My email address that I use for blogs, web forms from companies I am familiar with, etc. has really never been subjected to spam. Maybe 2 or 3 emails a month.
I've found it's the other email accounts I have to manage, tech support emails, customer service emails, etc. that get hit with the spam, because these companies want to keep easy-to-figure-out email addresses (customerservice@...). These are then recreated by email generating software. Also, when I create a free email, like at Hotmail, the inbox will be filled with spam just one minute after creating the account.
My problems with spam seem to stem from the corporate abuse of buying and selling databases to saturate us with unsolicited and questionable products and services, rather than the email address I use on web forms or in blogs.
9 - Barry
Eli, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
As Steve mentioned, this page showed up in your Google News filters because (a) Google scrapes Blogcritics as as source of news and (b) the post mentions Vicodin. You'll probably be seeing a lot more of my posts in your in-box, as I tend to blog about drugs a *lot*.
I am highly amused by your suggestion that my spam problem results from covert visits to adult websites and online pharmacies. I must be visiting Nigerian scammer sites and Moldovan warez outposts in the wee hours of the morning, too!
Just for the record, I have nothing against either pornography or recreational drugs, but I have preferred sources for both that are not online.
And I practice very good computing hygeine: I'm firewalled, anti-virused, and anti-spywared out the ying-yang (ZoneLabs Firewall/Antivirus and Counterspy, respectively; all kept up to date, system scanned rigorously and regularly.) As a 20+ year veteran of the computing industry, and a guy who's had PCs since you had to build them yourself from a kit, with a soldering iron, I have some idea of what I'm doing.
The problem, you see, is that I'm a twenty-year veteran of the computing industry. As an early adopter, I had an e-mail address before the first piece of unsolicited commercial e-mail was ever conceived of or sent out--long before the Web was even a gleam in the eye of Tim Berners-Lee, in fact--and I've had the e-mail address I currently use since 1995.
Believe me, a lot of databases with my e-mail address in them have been sold, resold and hacked since 1995.
I get virtually no spam on my Gmail account (roughly a year old.)
However, my spam-ridden "old address" is in the address books of literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of colleagues and acquaintances. I get important business and personal e-mail there every single day, and so far have been unwilling to suck it up and shift everything to a virgin address.
As I said in my post, the spam is more an annoyance than a real problem; the filters take care of 95% of it. (The post itself, for those of you taking notes at home, was allegedly a humor piece.)
By the way, getting a stern lecture from a guy who operates a website (findrxonline.com) that offers to hook people up online with doctors who will prescribe them FDA-scheduled controlled substances is a *hilarious* experience.
10 - DrPat
Google sees Vicodin, spammers see opportunity. Aarggh!
11 - SFC SKI
BC might want to consider adopting the "type in the code above" comment method to cut down on these &^*(&^% spambots.
Is there any type of study to show whether advertisers make any money off of this annoying practice, or telemarketers for that matter?
12 - DrPat
They certainly cannot prosper from BC, where spam-laden comments get ousted so quickly!
13 - SFC SKI
Thank you, slayer of spambots!
14 - DrPat
Yeah, I think his initials are "PW"...
15 - jarboy
dear bloggers,
is there a term like spam for blogging on someone else's blog? a response that is more than 3 paragraphs has morphed into it's own blog, and should be posted in the writer's blog site and linked to.
if there is not such a term, let's make one up. how about flogger and flogging? like, he dude, don't flog my blog.
16 - dee
My spam says I want a large penis too. But I am a girl.....I think it's wrong. :P
17 - jarboy
be honest, dee, you do want a large penis, don't you?
not necessarily permanently grafted to your body, tho. but then again, if freud was right about penis envy, maybe you want that, too.