One for the Spam Zoo.
Consider this oddity:
from: Sydney B. Kirklen <sydneybkirklen@gmail.com> to: censored date: Thu, May 9, 2013 at 3:05 PM subject: Is Loper-os.org For Sale? (Website Not Just Domain) My business partners and I would like to present you with an offer to purchase loper-os.org. We promise not to take up much of your time. Would you be interested in selling if the price was right?
Best Regards,
Sydney B. Kirklen
Phoenix, Arizona
Being a chump, I replied, thinking it might be an actual human:
from: Stanislav Datskovskiy <censored> to: "Sydney B. Kirklen" <sydneybkirklen@gmail.com>
date: Thu, May 9, 2013 at 4:03 PM subject: Re: Is Loper-os.org For Sale? (Website Not Just Domain) No. Go Away.
Turns out, it was probably a script. Although it isn't clear to me what purpose (other than address harvesting) it might serve. What happens if you actually agree to sell your site to the spammer? What exactly is the point, from the spamming scum's point of view, of purchasing a "human" site to turn into a link farm? Presumably, your readers will make the mistake of loading the turd exactly once, after which they will curse your name for all eternity.
Instead of being a chump give them some account number next time. If you get any money on it you'll have a better reason to think about it, and maybe blog about it too. 🙂
Dear Piotr Staszewski,
There is some precedent for cleaning out idiot spammers. But it is a sport for people with ample free time.
Yours,
-Stanislav
It's actually more a case of dealing with scammers than spammers; 419 is, after all, the nigerian government code for advance fee fraud.
It is certainly a sport for those with a certain amount of free time, but the idea is to get the guy on the other end of the line to do more work than you do. For nothing.
It's possible that what you've encountered was, indeed, a scam rather than a spam, in the case of "purchase $object" it usually works as follows:
The scammer sends a fake cheque for $object_value + $some_other_amount. The excess is usually "to cover shipping", but might be explained as "dammit, I put one too many zeros on the cheque". The mark then returns a certain amount of the excess back to (usually west african) scammer via western onion or moneygrab. Shortly afterwards, the mark's bank informs them that the cheque has shown to be fake / stolen, and hilarity ensues. Or not.
A rather lovely man I knew used the following "bank" details for scammers to send cheques to:
Most amusing (google translate on the name should help for those who don't speak hungarian). You're missed, Ed Almos.
I suppose gmail and the reason of getting spam is using gmail. In that case, keep using gmail, lol.
Dear Vexare,
There are a great many terrible, damning things to be said about GMail. But the lack of a reasonable spam filter isn't one of them.
Yours,
-Stanislav