back to article Spam, a lot of it: Bubble tea is the Seoul of wit

Your Spam Manager is holding 4 messages. Oh here we go... Subject: Customer Invoice Payment From an email address beginning "realestatetips"? I think not. Subject: PLEASE Update BANK DetaiLS Gosh yes that looks genuine, must open that later and run the attachment. Subject: Carreer oppurtunity As a literary agent, I …

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  1. Anomalous Cowturd
    Happy

    Those Sun Pillows look brilliant!

    Could you forward me that mail?

    As for jazz mags, when I were a lad, back in the 70s, Fiesta, Knave and the like seemed to grow in hedges near lay-bys. Didn't need no key. ;o)

    1. Triggerfish

      Re: Those Sun Pillows look brilliant!

      I too think those sun pillows look excellent.

      Also you still see a lot of that graphic design style in Eastern Asia today.

    2. Alistair Dabbs

      Re: Those Sun Pillows look brilliant!

      I can't forward any of the original emails: they were deleted long ago. Not even I would archive spam for ten years. They exist only as the screengrabs you see in the article.

      1. Anonymous Custard

        Re: Those Sun Pillows look brilliant!

        There are worse pillow examples than that sun one (one for lonely on this day of love and profit maybe?).

        Also had a banking spam recently which kinda gave itself away by greeting me as "Dear Barclays costumer" - obviously thought I was going to dress up in a stripey jumper and mask to hand over my swag bag?

      2. Naughtyhorse

        Re: Not even I would archive spam for ten years.

        thank god for that, as the question did arise while reading the article...

    3. Irongut

      Re: Those Sun Pillows look brilliant!

      Indeed porn mags literally grow on trees. All Paul Raymond does is harvest them.

  2. John H Woods Silver badge

    But I used to enjoy the various devious and imaginative ways in which some nutter in another country would try to fool me out of my credit card details through the medium of an electronic message full of blatant falsehoods that even a household pet could spot.

    That used to puzzle me too, until I discovered it might be a deliberate strategy to automatically select the most gullible marks - a theory elegantly advanced in this pdf from Microsoft Research.

  3. Syed
    Coat

    "Next week, I’m going to the office in a pink-and-blue jumpsuit."

    Oi, Dabbsy,

    If you're going to do that, then make sure you hire a cameraman to "accidentally" point the camera at your backside - repeatedly. Then you will have truly recreated the "Challenge Anneka" vibe.

    1. Anonymous Custard

      Re: "Next week, I’m going to the office in a pink-and-blue jumpsuit."

      I must admit, I was trying to decide whether Dabbsy was having an 80's flashback episode and trying to be either Anneka or Clive James.

      I'm going with the latter, as the mental image of the jumpsuit is too much to entertain.

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
        Trollface

        Re: "Next week, I’m going to the office in a pink-and-blue jumpsuit."

        I did wonder if Mr Dabbs felt that the hairbrush scam was a bit of a cruel joke, given his apparent lack of... need for one. So Clive James would also be more appropriate than Anneka there as well.

        Thanks for letting us know what was in the safe though.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Come to think of it, I haven’t received decent spam for ages.

    Lucky you. I get at least four of those every week:

    Hello Web Mail User

    Your account is being closed due to space. Click here to send your user name and password for an upgrade.

    Sincerely,

    Your Company Web Mail Administrator.

    Often the "click here" is to one of those annoying free web pages/form services, which makes very easu for scammers to create the forms but almost impossible to report phising.

    Sometimes instead of "Your Company" I get something like ${company_name}.

    The quality of the scammers is going downhill!

  5. Uncle Slacky Silver badge
    Stop

    Wot no Fan Death?

    There've got to be some gadgets aimed at reducing this well-known (but oddly unique to Korea) health "risk". A timer switch of some kind, possibly?

    1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      Re: Wot no Fan Death?

      Maybe that's why the "Off" function gets a long description - it's talking about "Fan Death" and/or explaining that the device turns off itself and/or explaining the term "Dead Man's Switch" fantastically tactfully.

  6. Dr_N

    Just.

    Brilliant.

    A classic piece of Friday.

    Keep up the good work.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      and some

      news about the contents of the safe as well! ("yes, there is a key" makes sense now)

      My own spam collection is rather small: it is a single email from one "Moses Harrington" entitled "particle accelerator 13 ballerinas". If my daughter decides to take up an interest in particle physics in a year or so, it may yet come in useful - both date from the same year :-)

      1. Frankee Llonnygog

        Re: and some

        Good to know that the business-critical jazz-mag library was secured with 2-factor authentication

  7. Thecowking

    My best spam

    Was a rather enchanting little piece to my work email address imploring me to buy an oscilloscope.

    I'm guessing that because I downloaded some BSPs they think I actually do hardware. Mind you I've never been so tempted by spam. I mean I don't _need_ an oscilloscope, but it's something you can imagine always being handy.

    *goes to dig out the mail and see if there were any good oscilloscopes in there*

    1. Alistair Dabbs

      Re: My best spam

      I do have one item of Korean spam that appears to be selling electronic tampons but that's just silly so I'm probably wrong and thought I'd better not include it here.

      1. Frankee Llonnygog

        Re: My best spam

        Perhaps it's an e-cigar - as endorsed by Bill Clinton?

  8. Tanuki
    Thumb Up

    Thanks for the Mammaries.

    The most bizarre Korean spams I ever got were a series promoting - it would appear - a range of breast-enhancement prostheses under the brand-name "Nipple-up!"

  9. Captain Hogwash
    Thumb Up

    Re: In Korean spam, they are ... always young and pretty.

    Pretty much like most western advertising then. Though I'd be more convinced if young, pretty Korean women were used to shift baths with doors.Good article.

  10. Semtex451
    Joke

    Really?

    "I have one example in which she has a faraway look in her eyes, head tilted to one side, as she hugs a fridge."

    Too badly soiled to display here?

  11. Irongut

    Next week, I’m going to the office in a pink-and-blue jumpsuit.

    Pics! I like a good laugh on a Friday.

    That Korean spam is very odd. My favourite spam I received a few years ago had the subject line "Get thicker, longer hair!" - I have hair down to my arse and a full beard. The last thing I need is thicker, longer hair. :)

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's alright for you

    I work for a Korean company and our intranet looks like that. I swear one day my eyeballs will explode.

    And no, I don't read a word of Korean. Which proved to be quite the disadvantage when I tried to use one of the space-age electronic toilets in the land of the Morning Calm. My morning wasn't very calm, I can tell you.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Pint

      Re: It's alright for you

      HA!

      I'm going to keep that mental image for the weekend....

  13. Corinne

    Just about all my spam these days is boring. A nephew got quite excited a few weeks ago when I received an email telling me the my video had topped the charts on a particular site, until I pointed out that I've never even posted a single photo on the web let alone a video to the 5-6 different hosts that keep telling me how popular it is.

  14. Ed 13

    Next week, I’m going to the office in a pink-and-blue jumpsuit.

    In a helicopter, I trust?

  15. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
    Happy

    I keep one treasured spam

    It will hopefully stay in my office spam folder for eternity.

    This is as much a mockery of myself, as the spammer in question.

    It's one of those your bank's been accessed, fill in this form and send it back to us urgently ones. The form is probably going to be a malicious zip.

    However in accordance with Murphy's law, the stupid spammer has forgotten to attach the file to the email. So I have visions of his servers churning out a few million of the buggers, only for him to spot the next day what he'd forgotten.

    My record was sending a form out at work to 40 people to be filled in, with delivery and read receipts (as the buggers never returned them). I'd had about 70 emails ping back into my inbox already, in under 5 minutes, when I got the quick call to tell me I'd forgotten the attachment. Doh! About 150 emails later...

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You say a household pet could spot obvious SPAM, but many Lecturers and Students at a (supposedly) top 5 UK University were more than happy to hand over their email account details to anyone who asked!

    I spent several years explaining to various people that we never asked for these and the reason their account was now locked was that it had been used to spam half the planet.

    1. Charles Manning

      Lecturers and students... of what?

      It's hardly setting the bar very high.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Keep it international

    Right now my inbox is enjoying a daily dalliance with emails from various US publications that inexplicably originate from Israel and seem only to point to web sites in Russia. But as you say, they do lack flair and style being deceptively plain - I might even go so far as to say that the Interweb spamming/phishing fraternity have become decidedly grey-flannel-suit professional.

  18. Kubla Cant

    "In the post – just imagine!"

    In the days before email, when spam was nothing more than a rather nasty tinned meat and the subject of a Monty Python sketch, it was not uncommon for offices to receive Nigerian scams in the post.

    They mostly appeared to have been laboriously produced on a pre-war manual typewriter, and the propositions were every bit as unconvincing as today's. I dare say the response percentage to postal spam is much greater than to emails, but even so it must have taken a lifetime of pounding, and a fortune in stamps, for the scammers to hook a victim.

    1. Old Handle

      Re: "In the post – just imagine!"

      My mother got a posted spam less than a year ago. At least it was in the mailbox, the post mark looked strange, so I wonder if it wasn't really just dropped in their directly. Anyway, it was something about how she's been awarded 2 free tickets by "US Airlines" (which isn't a real airline) and if she didn't act quickly to claim them, they might be "given to the alternate".

      1. James O'Shea

        Re: "In the post – just imagine!"

        I just got one of those yesterday, it hasn't made its way into the bin yet.

        It's a check, for $1000, redeemable only for 'airfare or alternate travel certificate'. I'm supposed to call a certain number to 'redeem' it. If I call within 48 hours of receiving it (how on Earth would they know?) I would be eligible for an additional $100 gas rebate voucher.

        And, oh, this is my final notification, if I don't make contact with them by an unspecified date the $1000 and the $100 will be awarded to 'an alternate'.

        Okay, _now_ it's in the trash.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Did employees 30 years ago really while away their boring workdays browsing porn?"

    That's nothing... while clearing out some old shelving at the back of our office, we discovered some photographs from about 25 years ago which feature some of the staff (*) celebrating a colleagues birthday in the office - complete with a couple of strippers.

    Several of the staff in question are still with the company, and occupying senior positions, so clearly such behaviour wasn't frowned upon back then as it would be today.

    (*) I very nearly put "several members of staff", before realising that such phrasing might be interpreted in a certain way when considered in context with strippers!

  20. Mark 85
    Unhappy

    My education is obviously lacking

    I've never received any Korean spam.

    1. James O'Shea

      Re: My education is obviously lacking

      You can have some of mine. In fact, you can have _all_ of mine. And the Chinese/Taiwanese, Russian, and Hebrew spam, too.

  21. LaeMing

    Spam is old-hat

    Today's hilarity is 'targeted' advertising. For all the information these companies claim to have on me, I have only, in the many thousands of supposedly targeted adverts tacked into sites I visit, received one such advert that had any relationship to anything in my life. Half the time they don't even get my gender right!

  22. Stratman

    So it wasn't just me then.

    "I even received something similar in the post claiming that I was the sole inheritor of $14.7m from a relative hitherto unbeknown to me, a Mr John Dabbs of Hong Kong,"

    I too kept the letter for posterity.

    1. James O'Shea

      Re: So it wasn't just me then.

      I got a personal email from Louis Freeh, Director of the FBI, using his personal Yahoo account from Hong Kong to let me know that the FBI had $26 million for me if only I would send them my banking details.

      Such a pity that Mr Freeh had left office at the FBI several years before I got that note.

  23. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    Attract men with large breasts

    I think I don't currently have and in fact don't quite correctly remember two spam messages whose title struck me as amusing, but my brain insists that that was one of them. But it may not have been.

    The other one was or wasn't "Do you want lager breasts?"

    Is it OK to find "Attract men with large breasts" funny? I know they're around.

    http://www.cracked.com/article_17270_100-unintentionally-hilarious-spam-subject-lines.html actually covers sender name as well as subject line.

    I recently got one that said "We are (heir-hunting investigating company), did you have a relative with the same surname as you?" As of this year, as far as I know I do not - it is a good name though, isn't it?

    I decided to pass it on to its e-mail hosting company (MyNet.com in, I dunno, Turkey or somewhere), the apparently genuine British heir-hunting agency, and the large Russian finance house with a London office, whose names were being abused - although it may happen all the time.

    http://www.snopes.com/fraud/advancefee/inherit.asp is the scam, although my version only had point 1, and I think that page turned up in Google with the three words phrase that struck me as characteristically odd in the e-mail text, beginning with the word "standard". I thought it might be the actual name of a process and I was curious, but it seems only to appear here. Which is handy for looking it up.

    I think I got an abbreviated one because then it isn't immediately clear that this is what it is. Unless you look it up to see if it's a well known spam.

  24. TonyJ

    My personal favourite

    Was the one I got that had been personally approved after their face to face meeting by 'primary minister gordon blair'.

    Late last year.

    Should've kept it - it was genuinely funny.

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