I'm somewhat bewildered by some of the contents of my email inbox these days. I've received several recently from a place called something like 'Underwear Club', which I deleted without even looking at - until tonight. "Why does this place keep bothering me?" I thought, mystified, so I opened it, only to find an ad with a photo of several guys sitting around in their underwear.
As far as I could tell from my quick glance, it was a genuine place selling such garments, perhaps for guys of a certain 'persuasion', but I know for a fact that I've never visited the site, so I can only assume that they're just randomly sending out emails in a scattershot approach in the hope of drumming up some business. Perhaps earlier emails from them were for women's underwear and because I never responded they thought they'd try a different approach, but I don't know.
(It did cross my mind for a moment that one of my friends might've thought it would be funny to subscribe to it in my name in order to wind me up. One friend once put an advert in a local paper saying that an African grey parrot was going free to a good home, and gave my 'phone number as the one to contact. I got home from night shift one morning to find around 50 messages on my answering machine offering to take the imaginary parrot off my hands.)
Anyway, I immediately unsubscribed (I've got plenty underwear, thanks very much), but then I realised that I've been receiving quite a few emails from various places of late, one claiming to be from Sainsbury's telling me that I'd won an air-fryer. It didn't look like a genuine Sainsbury's email address so I never clicked on the link, but I'm beginning to wonder why my email address seems to have suddenly become accessible to so many different 'businesses'. Usually such things would automatically go straight into my Spam file, but now pop up in my inbox with increasing (and disappointing) regularity.
I've had emails telling me I've won the Lottery (or some contest I haven't entered) or been awarded compensation for something. (I don't open them, but the subject title carries the contents info.) Or I've won some fancy technological device or other, or a delivery company has a parcel at their warehouse for me, and all sorts of other nonsense. And just who the hell is Senator Gary Peters? Never heard of him before, but he keeps emailing me. (I haven't bothered opening any of them.)
Any other Crivvies been experiencing anything like this recently, and if so, what's the most outrageous or ridiculous one you've received?
10 comments:
I googled Gary Peters and he's a Democrat senator from Michigan, USA but I can't think why he's emailing you, Kid. Interestingly he was born on December 1st 1958 so he's only a few weeks younger than you. I'm very careful about giving out my email address so I don't get bothered by spam.
If indeed it even is him, CJ, might just be conmen using his name with a dodgy link to click on in the email. I never used to get a lot of spam, but there's been quite a bit of it lately - usually some-too-good-to-be-true offer from people or places I've never heard of. I don't know how they find out email addresses, but maybe there's a list available to buy somewhere from dodgy dealers.
From what you've said, Kid, there's nothing unusual in your Spam. Perusing my Junk folder, I currently have a nude photo from Emily, a girl who lives 800m from me (not sure if that's metres or miles), a CONGRATS!!!! email telling me they have credited £50,000 to my account and an invitation to last longer in bed without a prescription. Finally I can give up those prescribed sleeping tablets!
A YouTube channel I watch (Atomic Shrimp) frequently does scambaiting videos (amongst other things) where he actually replies to these emails and strings them along, sometimes for weeks on end which I find most amusing. His other stuff is how you would like Blue Peter to still be like now, walking, nature, cooking, gardening etc. A mixed bag but entertaining and relaxing. But I digress. Not really Spam but an advert on Facebook said "Why you are paying too much for your socks." At that point, I thought I am spending far too much time on Facebook.
Although I don’t use Amazon wherever possible, I find on the occasion that I do, I subsequently get a load of junk emails and several nuisance calls to my mobile number
Thing is, M, more and more of what were once spam emails are now appearing in my normal inbox, which makes me wonder sometimes if my computer has been hacked. I too get the kind of emails that you mention, but where did they get my email address from? It's a mystery. I also get invitations from Russian women telling me to email them, but I've never visited any dating sites so I don't understand why or how they're contacting me. I have a policy of deleting all Spam email unread (unless it's from a site I recognise and have heard from before on my normal inbox - the Corgi Model Club for example), but I seem to be getting more and more spurious emails than ever.
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Thing is, Anon, I'm getting emails and Spam purporting to be from sites I've never used before, which is a bit of a worry. Haven't received any nuisance calls (yet) though.
As I understand it, if just one person or business you have ever emailed is itself hacked, every email address in their system can then be bombarded with false emails just trying to hack other computers. This is the result of artificial intelligence with time on it's hands creating mischief.
Eventually they will hit 'gold' and access bank systems. This is both the game plan of organised crime and nations like North Korea.
Selling you underwear is the least of it. At this point global warming is being helped along by thousands of servers world wide making thousands of calculations per second just to create chaos.
It's like Lex Luther or The Joker on steroids.
I seem to remember that happening with Yahoo (I think, but it could've been another site), T47. They sent out emails telling people to change their passwords. I assume they did this after they'd fixed their security issues.
Luckily, I don't use online banking, so hopefully they'll never get their hands on my dosh.
I often wonder how the spam filter works because very often some of my non-spam goes in the Junk folder and even though I mark it as not spam, next time the same thing happens. I'm sure I've missed emails in the past that have gone straight to the Junk folder then deleted after 30 days. Conversely, occasionally spam goes into my Inbox but it doesn't happen as often. I have a few email addresses, my main one for legitimate stuff and another I use if I am suspicious of a website.
My most craziest bit of spam mail I got was from a woman whom I had no idea who she was informing me I was the most handsome man she had ever seen and after quite a bit of dribble informed me if I was to Western Union her money to buy her an airline ticket she would fly over and marry me. At first I thought one of my crazy friends had signed me up to a Lonely Hearts Club but the minute I reached the money section , the email was marked spam and hence deleted from the spam folder. Never heard from her ,it ,whatever again
I'm not sure how it works either, M. I recently had a legitimate email from the Corgi Model Club go into my Spam folder, whereas all the previous ones went into my usual inbox. Now I'm getting all sorts of stuff that would normally have gone into my Spam folder bypassing it for my inbox. I'm not sure that using different email addresses will help, because it might still enable dodgy sites to access your computer as that's where all your emails are sent from.
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I think you had a lucky escape there, LH. I once had an email purporting to be from Donald Trump, saying I was being awarded loads of compensation for something. Just type "An email from Donald Trump..." into my blog's search box if you'd like to read it.
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