[Scspamcop] Re: low importance - anyone know what this spammer is peddling?

[Farelf]

ed wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Aug 2007 11:53:30 -0700
> "Mike Easter" <MikeE at ster.invalid> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Then you paste the tracker into the discussion group and you don't
>>paste spam, spamheaders, or spambody into the discussion group.
>>Anyone can use that tracker link above to access the entire spam
>>which spamcop's parser stores.
> 
> 
> In future I will do this. Apologies for breaking the rules and regs.
> 

In any event, IMO there is some useful content in the spambody should 
you be wishing to "poll" the internet looking for the opinion of others 
who have responded in some way to past observations, if not to the 
actual blandishments contained therein.  A phrase like "- Really High 
Wages.", with the puncuation used, is slightly idiosyncratic and forms a 
useable basis for a search engine query which, in conjunction with a 
characterization not used in the spambody, such as "spam", will result 
in many hits if many people have classified it as such in the past.

Spammers, especially of the high-volume type which are the most likely 
type to be encountered because it is the most likely to be profitable 
for them are really, really lazy and/or stupid and/or unimaginative 
and/or challenged in the reader's version of the language and tend to 
recycle content from previous spam or to steal it from other sources 
(where parts of that content are offered in another context, perhaps 
legitimate). These features make this polling approach work for you. 
Those spammers that are not any of these things would be of very great 
concern and a potent cause for the dictum "don't read spam".

In this case, previous high-volume sightings are recorded, some of them 
in relation to "FlowerLand International" in October 2006.  If you are 
interested you could poll, as suggested, and make your own mind up about 
the evidence and conjecture available.  It is a little like 
investigating urban myths and hoaxes in a way except you are starting 
with a well-founded suspicion based on the unanswered question "how did 
this unknown benefactor come by my address?"  Hence the 
generally-applicable and very sage advice "don't read spam".  That 
(practice) will turn you blind in time - though /that/ could be a 
function of screen resolution combined with  monitor quality.

It is worth reflecting that even the most hardened skeptic must 
occasionally be tempted to set aside their reservations, to believe in a 
possibility that their "ship has come in".  Little wonder, because 
spammers "shotgun" for such vulnerabilities, for the keys to push to 
make it work for them.  They seek the unrealialized dreams we have that 
make us human (or some of us ...<g>).

I think most of us have occasion to look at the content of some spam if 
the alternative is to become a total email recluse.  If we read such 
"almost certainly" spam without constantly remembering "the unanswered 
question" we do so, of course, at our peril.  That is not the advice 
which was sought, which was an appeal to the Delphic method, but it may 
help explain why some of the most capable analysts "here" might not wish 
to engage.  There are, certainly, more specialized venues for that which 
might also be revealed by the more catholic polling suggested.

HTH