This just in, from The Sgt Major!

After a 43 month sabbatical the Spam Tin has returned.  Is this one last hurrah, or is there a new wave of spam hitting our inboxes?

As usual we have responded in our usual genuine manner, with our response in italics below.

I am Sgt Major Gabriel Torok,

Greetings Sgt Major Gabriel.  I wonder, have we met before?  Are you perhaps related to the Arcangel? 

 

I found your name on the amnesty post and because of that i assumed that you are a kind person, therefore i decided to share with you little about what is happening here at war zone believing that together we can use this great opportunity to help the poor. If you accept we can work together to help the poor people, I pray that God will touch your mind and use you to help the poor around you, I can assure you there is no risk since we already have a reliable delivery company that we can use to carry out this delivery without any problem

Thanks but I already have a reliable delivery company, they’re called UPS.

 

I am excited talking to you today and I am glad to have met someone like you with a kind mind, there is something i will like to share with you and thank God I found the treasure myself after a tough fire exchange with the Taliban’s.

 

Treasure you say?  Tell me more.

there is something happening here at the war front which I will like to share with you and if you accept we can work together to help the poor people, I pray that God will touch your mind and use you to help the poor around you, I can assure you there is no risk since we already have a reliable delivery company that we can use to carry out this delivery without any problem

Sorry, I’ve just had a terrible case of deja vu from a whole paragraph ago.

 

there is so much corruption going on here in the military and as a soldier i believe that the only way i will show gratitude to God for saving me at war zone is by doing good, American we fight war to relief the poor and set the captive free not to oppress and suppress the poor, 

I agree, to oppress and suppress is to undress with distress.  Can I have your address?

 

I sent my friend request to you based on humanity and I blieve together we can work for God by helping the poor children and less privileged with this great opportunity i am going to offer to you now instead of allowing the ungodly fools to continue taking the advantage of the poor, I believe that every human been who love the children and care for their future need to join us in bringing peace to the youth by doing good and showing good example of life, 

Please excuse my ignorance as I have not heard of a human been before.  Is it like a mung bean?

 

I am in US military; currently I am among the soldier in Afghanistan on peace keeping mission and several times we have discovered treasures like Gold, Diamond, Cash etc, these treasure are discovered after exchanging fire with the Taliban’s at their hide out place, these are the treasures the Taliban’s uses to purchase war materials they are using to kill the innocent people while some innocent motherless children continue to suffer in hunger

Did you find any Bitcoins?  Maybe even a Bitcoin mine?  I understand they are like golddust.

 

so many times after exchanging fire with them and we succeeded in entering into their hide out place, such treasure are discovered and all this treasure when discovered are being sent to the government to support the charity work, lately we have also discovered that none of this money are being used the right way instead the government officials take the benefit alone act of greediness which is the number one problem of the world today, one person want to own the world and every other person become his tenant

You do know I’m a member of the UK Parliament, right?

 

As soldiers we believe doing good is the only way we can show gratitude to God who saved us during the war and we also believe God will continue saving people who are doing good work, but finally we have find out that this money when sent to the government, one of the top officials always divert it into a personal bank account for only their family benefit and inheritance to unborn children while the motherless already born babies continue to suffer hunger, some of them will use it for their political position without considering the motherless children who need this money to feed

We must create some kind of diversion to stop this money being diverted.  If only there was a way.

 

Because of the above reason my team have agreed to stop sending any money to government and now we are looking for individual who can work together with us in helping the hopeless children, I considered to be your friend on facebook after going through your profile, it touches my mind that we can work with you and I considered you as the best person we can use to reach the needy around you after the little conversation we had, Please I want you to consider the innocent children that are suffering and take this obligation of working with my team to help the motherless children

I am definitely considering it.

 

We the soldiers here have concluded that working hard and continue sending to government is like the sacrifice of Ken in the bible which never reach heaven therefore we must act fast and find the best way our sacrifice can reach the motherless through your help.

Who is this Ken you speak of?  Is he a secret disciple? In biblical times I understand Ken was quite a popular name, along with Fred and Sidney.

This is not going to cost you any stress since we have a reliable source to bring the gift at your doorstep

Is this UPS again?  I have a contract with them if that helps?

and all you do is to distribute it to the proper charities around you who deserve this money. this is all i can said for now and i hope you can give your service, as soldiers everything we are doing with you must be kept secret to protect our job

if will be interested to be as my next kin to help me collect this treasure from the delivery then do let me know 

I am very interested in you and your next kin.  Please send me all of your Bitcoins, loaded into an unmarked UPS truck to ensure a safe delivery.  I have many distribution channels across Europe, and working with my partner Eddie Stobart will ensure a safe onwards delivery.

thank you till i hear from you,

 

Sgt Major Gabriel Torok,

Spam/Swine Flu Joke

I have received this email today allegedly from HMG Department of Health: 

“Please be aware for health reasons over the swine flu panic we are advising the general public not to eat tinned pork” 
I have checked up on this and the Government have said: 

“Ignore it, it’s spam”

Johnny Ball in Spamming Shocker

Johnny Ball has finally gone completely cahoots and sent me this!  What is the spam world coming to when spam needs celebrity endorsement?

1 in 12,500,000 Can’t be Wrong!

ccording to a new study, spam emails get 1 response in 12,500,000 emails.  That’s less than 0.00001%! Amazingly though, even with such a poor response a large spam organisation such as the Storm Networkwill make around £4500 profit a day.

Compare this to the general sales market who will on average get one sale in one hundred people and the stats look even more outlandish.

So is spamming the answer to all our sales problems?  Nope.  For everyday businesses there are worldwide laws that prohibit us from spamming without prior consent from the recipient.  Even the junk mail that falls through your door has been loosely authorised by your good self and a helpful 3rd party (remember that tick box at the bottom of that magazine subscription form which said something along the lines of “I authorise you or a 3rd party to fill my mailbox with guff”?). It is a fine line between what is legal and what is illegal but a common way to spam is to use indirect linking which takes you to a webpage with a banner ad for the product on it and not directly to the manufacturers site.

So how do we get people to sign up for our marketing campaigns? In whatever campaigns your run you need to create a hook which will mean people will give you their contact details.  There are many examples of this and you just need to pick the right one for your business, from running a competition to giving something away for free.  The bottom line is when you’ve been granted access to contact someone, then it is a free license to bombard them until they say stop.

The Spam Tin does not condone spamming in any way, but without it there would be even less content on this blog!

Craptic Coding

Today’s spam innovation comes from Bert Drake.  This is a man who knows all the crannies in your spam filter, and by doing so helped him to sneak this through:

keaton diverge infrequent

drugstore ahem lop? porch, postman bulldoze.

schoolmarm paranoiac open postman suds infrequent, mollify

washbasin nautical drugstore washbasin schoolmarm.

driscoll washbasin.

Is it just the ramblings of some crazy baffoon or is there some encrypted message hidden in the repeated words? If you take all the repeated words and add them together in a sentence you get “Infrequent Drugstore Schoolmarm Postman in Washbasin”.  Oooooh the thought of it makes me all hot!

Sadly the excitement of this spammers discovery made him forget to put any links in his spam, rendering it useless art.

 

 

The first spam related murder?

Some horrific spam related news today in the form of convicted spam king Edward Davidson being part of a suicide/murder spree involving himself, his wife and their 3 year old daughter who were all killed in the incident.  Another teenage girl and a baby boy were also hurt but the girl managed to run for help even though she had been shot in the neck.

Davidson had escaped from a minimum security prison on Sunday, aided by his wife and they had both been on the run since.

Sentenced in April 2008 for spam email, tax evasion and criminal forfeiture it is thought Davidson, 35, is responsible for the killings.

More on this story can be found here.

650.000.000 reasons not to…

Today Zondervanamo is a little bit richer and has shared his winnings with The Spam Tin.

• Greetings!

Erm, hello.

• I have been waiting for you to contact me eversince for your Certified Bank Draft of 650.000.00 USD that you won from the Online Draw, but I did not hear from you.

Alas I was a little confused by the number of decimal places in the figure quoted and neglected to respond.  I don’t get out of bed for less than a 1000.000.000 you see. Plus being a cockney means I only understand slang terms like “monkey” and “pony”.

• Then I went and deposited the Draft with FEDEX COURIER SERVICE, West Africa. I am out of the country for the past four weeks on a 4 month course and i will not be back till end of September.

WHAT!  How could you?  These people are sharks I tell you, before you know it they’ll have moved those decimal points up a couple of places.  I am truly dishonoured by your flippant way with the ponies.

• What you have to do now, is to contact FEDEX COURIER as soon as possible to enable them deliver your package to you because of the expiring date.For your information.

I called the number you gave me and I spoke with a man called Fred Ex and he was most helpful.  He explained that there are around 650 ponies and 8 monkeys in the package. 

•  I have paid for the delivering Charge, Insurance premium and Clearance Certificate Fee of the Cheque showing that it is not a Drug Money or meant to sponsor Terrorist attack in your Country.

Yes but Fred Ex told me that your “first class” stamp didn’t cover it, I now need to bring in a specialist heavy haulage company with compartments big enough to separate the monkeys and the ponies.

• The only money you will send to the FEDEX COURIER to deliver your Draft direct to your postal Address in your country is (320.00USD). Again, don’t be deceived by anybody to pay any other money except 320.00USD.

Do you mean a “dolphin”?  This is just getting out of hand, Fred Ex has been seriously injured when trying to stop a monkey from scratching his eyes out he fell over, got trampled by a pony and kicked into a water tank full of dolphins.

He is in a bad state and I fear we will be hearing from his lawyers.

Next time don’t bother contacting me for anything less than a manatee.

 

Regards,

Don Ping.

The Davinci Cock

Today this from the inbox of Claggy – “Enjoy these pastel tints! And the mysterious bold ‘A’! What can it all mean? Perhaps spam is just one giant code for us to crack?”

Hei,

V

GI

A

G

R

A

See how the mysterious bold ‘A’ draws your eye in.  Look beyond the pastel shades and find… a link to the saviour of your frustrations!

Maybe they should turn it into a competition?  Crack the code, win crack for your cock!

Penis 2.0

Today I’ve been invited to “Update your penis”, which got me to thinking…

If there really was some miracle pill or pump device which could revolutionize my dick what would Penis 2.0 really look like?

Penis 2.0 would include:

• greater flexibility
• 2 eyes for glorious 3D!
• viagra on demand
• removable layers for switching religions
• built in RSS feed so that subscribers can know when you are horny
• user login prevent unwanted access in times of drunken status
• downloadable updates (watch out for viruses though)

Songs in the key of Spam

Have you ever read the subject line of a spam mail and felt the need to burst into song?  These artists have and as a result they have published their musings on a CD.  Check out “Outside the Inbox” and get down with songs such as “Do You Measure Up” and “Erik, Someone Wants to Date You”

It’s truly inspired.