Goddamnit! Who Put Luncheon Meat In My Inbox?

October 3rd, 2002 Posted in 2002

spam n.

Unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail.

Hypothetically, the “junk mail” feature of a Hotmail account is useful for getting rid of spam. Realistically though, I still have to go through the junk mail folder daily, looking for the odd email from a real person that gets lumped in there by accident. It’s only ever happened a few times, admittedly; but every time that email has been at least somewhat important. Because of this, I now have to check two inboxes every time I log into Hotmail: my “junk mail” folder, which will contain up to thirty pieces of spam mail at any given time; and my “inbox”, which contains over forty pieces of spam mail that managed to make it past the filter.

Admittedly, I’ve had my Hotmail account for something like eight years now, so it’s had a chance to get lodged in the databases of every single spammer on the planet. I’ve used the account countless times while gaining access to download shareware and other tools; I’ve used it to set up online accounts for various new online thingies that’ve come up over the years, your ICQs and Napsters and so on; I’ve even used it to gain access to some fairly questionable websites; and I’ve done this for years. So at this point, my spam-to-email ratio is something like 80 to 1 and climbing. And maybe it is finally time to retire the poor account and get a new one. But for one, I’ve already given everybody I’ve ever known for eight years this email, so it’d be an enormous hassle switching now. And secondly, I managed to procure james_pinkerton@hotmail.com. Not james_pinkerton445, not jpinkerton_34, but James underscore goddamn Pinkerton, baby. Given the sheer number of people who use Hotmail, many of whom I don’t doubt share my name, I consider this a bit of a coup. To abandon the email now would be like giving away a prime plot of land. Countless James Pinkertons out there have to make do with unweildy, cumbersome email addresses with more numbers and ampersands than proper letters—letting my email address rot away unused would, in some way, betray them. I can’t give up the good fight. And so I must shovel out boatloads of spam from the damn thing on a twice-daily basis.

I’m sure you’ve noticed this yourself, but the spammers are getting wilier. It used to be you’d get a few emails with subject headers like “MAKE THEM GO WILD WITH YOU’RE HUG 12 INCH MEMBER!!!” or “Work Form Home And Be A Milionare!” It was easy to spot them, with their unnecessary exclamation and unfortune all-caps spelling.

(As an aside to the mass-emailing pornographers out there: if you’re sending a spam-ad to 100,000 people, have the decency to run a quick spell-check, okay? Honestly, is your time so precious? Are there truly so many vile porn-based activities on your itinerary that you can’t take the time to spell “XXX Colege Slutes” properly? Just because you’re a reprehensible near-felon, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take some measure of pride in your job. Get Hooked on Phonics, greasy porno-guys of America. You won’t regret it.)

Nowadays, though, the spammers have gotten collectively crazy like foxes. The subject headers now read “Important: About Your Loan!” or “Hey, haven’t seen you in a while.” Like the velociraptor smacking its small bullet head systematically along the electrified fence, they’ve LEARNED. Now they come in camouflage, in the innocence guises of local bank representatives, people you conceivably met at parties, and other people with important news.

It still doesn’t work, of course, because we’re not actually THAT stupid. If there was seriously a problem with my loan, I’d like to think the multi-billion dollar corporation that governs my account wouldn’t let me know through a strange loner named Jack from @freediplomas.org. They’d call me, like the sensible human beings they are. Ditto for everyone else with “important news”—honestly, if something had really happened to my grandmother, I’m fairly certain my father would simply call me, and not email me disguised as 89909knfishgrrab@sex-addicts.porn.bigtits.com. My father, while gifted in many other areas, is about as capable of sending email as he would be leaping across the province to tell me the news in person.

So I make it a game now—which spam mail’s gonna fool me this month? Or better, have such a surreally interesting subject header that, even though I know full well it’s only an ad for teen web cams, I’ll still open it? Like “Lose 20 Pounds in Fifteen Seconds!” I’m sorry, but anyone who makes a claim that blatantly stupid has my full attention. (As it turns out, the program in question involves taking a “miracle pill” three times a day with water for a week while eating no food. They mention the “eat no food for a week” thing as an aside, focusing their attention on the miracle pill; but somehow, I sense the not-eating step of this plan might have something to do with the miracle weight loss.)

Or “GET THE BIG BRESTS YOU DESERVE, JAY_PINKERTON!!” Not only has this stranger taken the time to address me by name, but they’ve also decided I’m entitled to big breasts. Whether or not I want them is beside the point—what’s important is they’ve determined I’m owed them, and I’m touched by their concern.

The best of all of them, however, is the latest breed—the ICQ spammer. Earlier today I got an unprompted message from a girl named Debbie who, as luck would have it, was 23 and lived in Toronto. “How are you doing?” asked Debbie. “Good, I hope! ;)”

I decided it best not to answer, instead opening up Debbie’s personal information file. Ah. Apparently, Debbie’s homepage is “www.sex-sluts.com.” She must share the webpage with other sex-sluts she knows, I surmised. Her URL was followed by the information that Debbie was single, and looking for a boyfriend. Well, good for her. It’s hard for a young sex-slut in the big city to find that special someone. Though I instinctively knew I wasn’t her Mr. Right, I nonetheless wished her the best on her search. Then I blocked her ICQ number and went about my business.

All of this leading to a thought some minutes later: somewhere out there, that gambit plausibly worked. Is there someone out there, even as I write this, talking to “Debbie” on ICQ? Purposefully ignoring her URL, or maybe contriving some wholly fictional excuse in his mind for why she might have chosen “sex-sluts” as her homepage? I don’t doubt it. And not even because he’s stupid—he’s just THAT lonely.

I don’t know—is this some online form of natural selection at work? Should we allow the e-predators out there to take the hard-earned dollars of the lonely men out there, the high school drop-outs eager for a diploma, the small-chested girls sick of being ignored and eager to shell out cash for cans? Or should we maybe be worried that the spammers out there are getting a little too good? What if they got better? What other ways will they discover to prey on our various insecurities and spiritual vacancies?

Who knows? But with your help, I can find out. Send your credit card number to james_pinkerton@hotmail.com now, and HELP ME GET RID OF SPAM AND GET TIPS FOR BEING IRESTABLE TO THE OPOSITE SEX!!!!!