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Curious Spam

Last year, I wrote a post called, "mail soliciting spams: what are they for?" In that post, I pondered on why some spam messages asked you to send out a piece of e-mail. I never gotten an answer on that topic. Today, a spam message on Friendster got me thinking about it again. Here is the following spam message:

HELLO
My name is miss lillian desmond saw your profile today and became intrested in you,i will also like to know you more,and i want you to send an email to my email address so i can give you my picture, for you to know whom i am.
Here is my email address lilliandesmond30@yahoo.com
I believe we can move from here!
I am waiting for your mail to my email address above.
lillian
(Remeber the distance or colour does not matter but love matters alot in life)

( lilliandesmond30@yahoo.com

This message almost looks genuine. But giving miss lillian giving out her e-mail address tipped it off as spam. And the search for "i will also like to know you more" on Google confirms it . . . unless miss lillian is so un-imaginative that she has to copy a popular spam message for potential prospects.

Nevertheless, I want to find out exactly what spammers do with people who fall for this trap. And this time around, I have better traps. First thing I did was getting a disposable e-mail address from Mailinator. Next I used Cyno's SendMail software to craft the following message:

Hi, lillian!
I'm glad to have receive your letter. You sound really sincere and a very nice person. I would love to get to know you better. Please write back soon. I look forward to reading your e-mail and seeing your pictures.

So, now I'll just have to check Mailinator every few hours to see if it bears any fruit. Better yet . . . I think I'll just subscribe to the RSS for my temporary mail box.

Chieh Cheng
Fri, 04 Apr 2008 01:40:46 +0000

Ok. Still no response. I guess I'm not going to "fall" for this trap in the future.

Chieh Cheng
Tue, 08 Apr 2008 06:04:39 +0000

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