Inbox Nasties

Aaah, don’t you remember the good old days? Back when spam filters actually seemed to work, and the only weird emails you’d get were from your long lost Nigerian businessman friend who conveniently chose this time to waltz back into your life so you could transfer him some money, even though he’d obviously pay you back? Or from those pesky people who seemed hell-bent on telling you how to give your girlfriend that bit of extra pleasure, and explaining how you could gain an extra three inches in a week? Well, unfortunately, those rose-tinted and legendary days have now come to an end. Mr Okuma and The Cialis Corporation have since ceased to email me, and I suddenly feel like the ex-boyfriend figure, yelling “Baby, please, come back! I didn’t mean to ignore you!”

“Why,” you ask? Well, there’s a whole new set of meanies that may just be nestling in your inbox right now.

Around seven times a day, I get an email from Scott Brian. If the name wasn’t suspicious enough [my mum always told me that anyone who had two first-names was a greedy little git!], the subject headings are fishier than the tuna salad you ate last week. Apparently, I, an 18 year old university student, hailing from the North West of London, can earn at least 6,000 pounds a DAY just from working in the comfort of my own home! And apparently I’m not the only one, John Carter, a stay at home dad from somewhere in Missouri has done it too, and is now absolutely raking it in! Isn’t that fantastic!?

Not really. Although I’m absolutely ecstatic for Mr Carter [if, indeed, he exists at all], I don’t really want to make a million pounds just by sitting in my room and ‘following a magic strategy’.

But that’s not the only one. There seems to be a whole new generation of spammers out there. As far as I can see, they love absurdist language and abstract comedy. Not only do they send you emails packed so tightly with viruses that it seems that it’s inhumane, but they send you meaningless drivel like “of Them it is YOU I think of Mum said Teapot Happiness.” And if you’re thinking of doing a double-take to try and actually make sense of that sentence… just… don’t bother.

One spammer, though, did catch my eye and almost made me fall in love in an instant. There was creativity, geek appeal, and a certain amount of panache in the email, and it was only made better by the phrase “JESUS TO STAR IN NEW BATMAN MOVIE. CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS.”

Obviously, the link was full of viruses. But the thought of Jesus playing Batman!? That, my friends, was completely worth it.

But the moral of this story is to always keep your antivirus fully updated and running, keep your computer patched and updated, and the number one rule of life: if it looks suspicious, it probably is.