📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™
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@heterodox Ugh, "lists" suck!
Back in 2012, I donated to the campaigns of one Democratic candidate for one office, and one Republican candidate for another office, because I liked what they stood for. That appears to have landed me on approximately all of the lists, and I've been getting emails from every campaign ever, ever since. (It's particularly fun when I get both sides of the same race frantically begging for my money and trying to scare me with a parade of horribles about what the other candidate will do if they get into office! That's happened more than once.)
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@Mason_Wheeler said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
trying to scare me with a parade of horribles about what the other candidate will do if they get into office!
Probably all true. They're politicians, after all. No matter which party they belong to, whatever they do, it will be horrible.
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@HardwareGeek said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
@dcon said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
@heterodox said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
@Benjamin-Hall said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
This one was particularly ineffective, as it was entirely in an Asian language, probably Chinese. And recorded with poor quality, so doubly incomprehensible. I had to listen twice to figure out that it was actually someone talking at all, not just random noise.
Not sure why someone would spam a Florida school number, including extension, with a poorly recorded Chinese message, but
.I got one of these the other day and mentioned it to a family member, and apparently they're really common, though I hadn't gotten one before.
I get about 3-4 of those every month.
I get them infrequently, but they're clearly pre-recorded, complete with background music.
I got one that went to voicemail (and then Google sent it to Spam automatically), sadly it wasn't the Chinese recording...
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You've probably seen Indian, Chinese and Russian spam, well this is African spam apparently:
The article is about a consulting company... in Dubai. This can't be a very effective strategy.
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P/S : Sorry. This mail is only sent you ! Unsubscribe.
They're sorry it was only sent to me? Well then who else is all that on the BCC? who is this htwinomugisha person?
At least they give a useful directive...
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From: Tea Burns Christmas
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@hungrier That's Grinch Tea.
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Hi,
It's that time of year when you are making new resolutions for the coming year!
Maybe you want to launch your startup, revamp your website, design a new campaign or get more customers. But you wonder if you'll be able to make those goals a reality.
You know what? You've totally got this—2020 is your year!
And we can help.
We help people in building brands, whether you are a startup or an established business. We will take care of all your needs. Logo Magix is a one-stop-shop, we have expertise in logo designing, web designing, animated videos, SEO, and social media.
Respond me back to schedule a 10 min call to discuss this.
Best regards,
Thomas Kandy
SVP Digital Marketing
Logo Magix
Reply to usubscribe
How much do you want to bet "Thomas Kandy" is not this person's real name? (Although it's possible. Kandy is a historic city of Sri Lanka, which was once controlled by the British, and English is spoken by almost 1/4 of Sri Lankans. I did not find any information on whether Sri Lankan English shares the oddities of Indian English.)
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@HardwareGeek said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
Hi,
It's that time of year when you are making new resolutions for the coming year!
Maybe you want to launch your startup, revamp your website, design a new campaign or get more customers. But you wonder if you'll be able to make those goals a reality.
You know what? You've totally got this—2020 is your year!
And we can help.
We help people in building brands, whether you are a startup or an established business. We will take care of all your needs. Logo Magix is a one-stop-shop, we have expertise in logo designing, web designing, animated videos, SEO, and social media.
Respond me back to schedule a 10 min call to discuss this.
Best regards,
Thomas Kandy
SVP Digital Marketing
Logo Magix
Reply to usubscribe
How much do you want to bet "Thomas Kandy" is not this person's real name? (Although it's possible. Kandy is a historic city of Sri Lanka, which was once controlled by the British, and English is spoken by almost 1/4 of Sri Lankans. I did not find any information on whether Sri Lankan English shares the oddities of Indian English.)
I know a ton of Sri Lankans, and, you're right, Thomas Kandy does not sound like a Sri Lanka's person's name, though it was undoubtedly inspired by the city of Kandy, so likely a Sri Lankan. Sri Lankan English, although a dialect in its own right, is closer to British English than American English, and has its own unique oddities.
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@jinpa said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
Sri Lankan English, although a dialect in its own right, is closer to British English than American English, and has its own unique oddities.
Is it anything like Indian English?
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@hungrier said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
@jinpa said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
Sri Lankan English, although a dialect in its own right, is closer to British English than American English, and has its own unique oddities.
Is it anything like Indian English?
Sort of. There are few Sri Lankans, except the Burghers, for whom English is their first language, so in that sense it is similar. I have not really studied Indian English, so I don't know the defining features of it. There are many Indian speakers of English whose English has a very aristocratic British accent. Although Sri Lankan English does have a British accent, the distinct aristocratic sound to it is substantially less.
My favorite was learning some words in Sri Lanka that I had never heard before, and so assumed were Singhalese, and then finding out that they were English words and had Singhalese equivalents.
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@jinpa I'm only familiar with Indian English from working with overseas contractors and co-op students, but there are a few stock phrases like "do the needful" and "revert back" that are trademarks of Indian English. I think at least do the needful is an old fashioned British phrase.
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@hungrier said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
@jinpa I'm only familiar with Indian English from working with overseas contractors and co-op students, but there are a few stock phrases like "do the needful" and "revert back" that are trademarks of Indian English. I think at least do the needful is an old fashioned British phrase.
I have never heard either of those. But maybe they just didn't come up. It's possible I've even heard Americans say the second one, and never really noticed. Yes, it's redundant, but people sometimes say redundant things.
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@jinpa said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
It's possible I've even heard Americans say the second one
I doubt it, unless they were either mocking Indians or had picked up Indian mannerisms from working with them extensively. Revert means "return to a previous state" — e.g., revert a commit that broke the build — or, more formally, to quote Mirriam-Webster, "to come or go back (as to a former condition, period, or subject)," but in Indian English it is used to mean "reply." (Cambridge English Dictionary does give "reply" as a definition specific to Indian English.)
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@HardwareGeek said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
@jinpa said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
It's possible I've even heard Americans say the second one
I doubt it, unless they were either mocking Indians or had picked up Indian mannerisms from working with them extensively. Revert means "return to a previous state" — e.g., revert a commit that broke the build — or, more formally, to quote Mirriam-Webster, "to come or go back (as to a former condition, period, or subject)," but in Indian English it is used to mean "reply." (Cambridge English Dictionary does give "reply" as a definition specific to Indian English.)
"Reply back" would be as redundant as "revert back".
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@jinpa The common formulation in Indian English is something like "Please revert back to me with your answers"
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@hungrier said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
@jinpa The common formulation in Indian English is something like "Please revert back to me with your answers"
Yes, I now recall I have seen that in recruiter emails. But I think that may be part the Indian recruiter culture, rather than Indian English.
Have you looked at any of the scam-baiting forums? Nigerian scammers use a lot of similar language to each other.
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Hey guyz, do you think I can trust this email sender?
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Speaking of something very loosely related, this thread just reminded me of a scam baiting video I saw a little while ago. The whole thing is pretty good but the highlight is someone putting one of the scammer's response emails to music:
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Seems legit
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@Tsaukpaetra
Reminds me of http://ismycreditcardstolen.com/
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Unfortunately he doesn't offer proofreading services.:
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@topspin Is translation and typesetting (by which I assume they mean changing page templates in Word) some kind of shady business now?
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@anonymous234 no, it’s just unsolicited advertisement. For something I assume they don’t do very well (otherwise they wouldn’t spam you).
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Status: thank.
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- I am not an alumnus of USC.
- I have never attended USC.
- I have no affiliation whatsoever with USC, apart from having once supported the Public Radio station that had once been the campus station.
- Even that tenuous affiliation ended almost 40 years ago.Âą
- I am not an alumnus of USC, but more to the point, I am not an alumna of USC or anything else. I have no interest in attending any women's conference, and I probably wouldn't be welcome if I did, seeing as how I'm a misogynistic old member of the patriarchy.
Âą That's not entirely true. A few years ago, the SF radio went public and was bought by (or somehow affiliated with) KUSC, and recently my donations to them started showing up on my bank statement as KUSC instead of KDFC. But that still doesn't even come close to making me an alumnus.
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@HardwareGeek said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
I am not an alumnus of USC.
I am. I click unsubscribe. Rinse. Repeat. At least once a week.
Fuckers.
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@dcon If you tell them to unsubscribe you and they don't, you have a valid case against them under the CAN-SPAM act...
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@Mason_Wheeler said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
@dcon If you tell them to unsubscribe you and they don't, you have a valid case against them under the CAN-SPAM act...
I know. Just have to get off my
butt.
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So not exactly an email, I just casually saw this uploaded on KnowYourMeme.com:
Definitely wins the prize for "least appropriate site to post your advertisements". And they don't even link their website so they're not getting any PageRank for it!
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@anonymous234 If there's any home interior picture I would expect to see on KnowYourMeme it'd be this:
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If the language as the email starts out wasn't a clue, the links are all garbage:
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@boomzilla I'm curious, how is it so obvious that it's a spam? Apart from the fact that there is nothing indicating how this "Omni Agent Solutions" (whoever they are) is related to BSA, the rest seems pretty cromulent to me?
I mean, it looks like a genuine BSA communication that was hijacked (copied) by someone wanting to cash on it (that is, assuming again the Omni thing is just your usual scammer and not legitimate), but apart from putting their links in there, nothing in the email strikes me as odd?
(of course I don't know a thing about BSA apart from what was in the news recently, so maybe there are some obvious hints to you)
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@remi originally the language, "As we previous shared with you" seemed off, but now I'm not so sure. I guess my first tip off was the sender. I regularly get emails from BSA and they come from a BSA domain (scouting.org, scoutingwire.org, etc).
This is a web mirror of the official email:
Or, who knows...maybe it isn't spam. I know I've reported actual emails at work that turned out to be legit, if suspicious looking. But omniagnt looks like a misspelling of omniagent[solutions] which looks like a legitimate company involved in this kind of thing. But then again...
https://omniagentsolutions.com/contactus
The more I look...now I think it was probably legit.
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@boomzilla said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
@remi originally the language, "As we previous shared with you" seemed off,
Yeah, that sounds a bit weird, but since I don't know what email you might or might not have gotten from the BSA before, that wasn't an obvious red flag to me. It's clear from what you've said elsewhere that you're involved with the BSA, so you getting such an email doesn't immediately strike me as wrong (I mean, if I were to get this email, it would obviously be a spam!).
I guess my first tip off was the sender. I regularly get emails from BSA and they come from a BSA domain (scouting.org, scoutingwire.org, etc).
That's the most obvious suspicious thing, clearly. Especially with the "omniagnt" misspelling (which I hadn't noticed. But then again, that's not unusual even for legit businesses.
Or, who knows...maybe it isn't spam. I know I've reported actual emails at work that turned out to be legit, if suspicious looking.
As usual, better safe than sorry.
But it's annoying when companies unwittingly use the same techniques that a spammer would (though of course spammers mimic what real companies do, but typically a legit company can (most of the time) avoid using weird domains, whereas by nature spammers have to).
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@remi said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
But it's annoying when companies unwittingly use the same techniques that a spammer would (though of course spammers mimic what real companies do, but typically a legit company can (most of the time) avoid using weird domains, whereas by nature spammers have to).
Yeah. My company has gotten better about sending an official email telling us, "Soon you'll be getting an email from xyz.com about blah blah blah." But my default response to getting something from one entity purporting to be representing another is to not trust it.
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Got an email touting "Viagra Professional".
Wondering whether needing that would be considered a disability requiring reasonable accommodation or failure to meet the job requirements.
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@HardwareGeek
It's just a hooker catering for an elder clientele and looks like that spam market segmentation is working
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TW: Only Kind Of Spam
Ok, I guess every company has to say something about it. Lets see what SmartBear thinks about the situation
There's nothing about COVID-19 in the email at all. Also, the line from the preview ("Thank you for your commitment...") does not appear in the email. Also also, I got two copies of this email at the same time.
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@hungrier Update: They've sent a correction that is actually relevant to their subject line. And I've figured out why I got both of them twice, because apparently two of my work email aliases are both signed up for some reason
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Aubrey, a social security advisor just called me. Girl, you need to fix your caller id. "ILLEGAL SCAM" (and some random number - it's from '669-20?-????' - I think each time the just increment the phone number by 1)
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Got mail from blakey's long lost cousin.
Best part is "welcome to the official website", because apparently the spammer they hired was really lazy.
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Got this one this morning.
There are a few things worthy of note:
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There is no mention of any company name, real or made-up.
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The bill is for a large amount of money, at least to an individual. If it were being sent to a business, maybe Accounts Payable wouldn't blink at the amount, but I sure would. Also, you can't see it because anonymization, but it wasn't sent to me. It was sent to my daughter, and she would certainly balk at a bill that size.
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I'm not even sure how I got it, unless there's some BCCing going on. My inbox is a catch-all account, but it shouldn't have caught something sent to another valid address.
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The bill is due today, so requires immediate action (if it were genuine).
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The invoice is attached as an Excel spreadsheet.
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The invoice is attached as a macro-enabled Excel spreadsheet.
It might be interesting to open it an a sandbox to see what sort of malware is embedded in it, but
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@HardwareGeek I got that one too (but mine was for 3069.00!). That's after getting a couple xls sheets from Quicken for a few thousand each over the last couple weeks.
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@HardwareGeek said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
It might be interesting to open it an a sandbox to see what sort of malware is embedded in it, but
.upload it to virustotal?
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yeah it totally makes sense that a markov chain bot on a different domain altogether would be sending emails to random people named Dong about how my keywords went down
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@ben_lubar said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
@HardwareGeek said in 📧 The Official Spam Emails Thread™:
It might be interesting to open it an a sandbox to see what sort of malware is embedded in it, but
.upload it to virustotal?
The
has no timeeffort for such frivolities.
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Oh, cool. My payment's been processed (without me doing anything)!
