The game of subconscious spam filtering

I was combing through the piles of uncollected e-mail this afternoon when this nugget grabbed my attention: "OnlineBootyCall message for Daniel Terdiman."

Putting aside the entertainment such a message might contain, it got me thinking about the subconscious filtering system I use to sift through the mounds of e-mail I get, looking for the ones I actually need to read.

There are all kinds of cues that signal spam: poor spelling; no caps when there should be; caps when there shouldn't be; extra periods; the whole, "I'm responding to your message" thing from some woman I've never heard of; bad grammar; offers of free money or iPods. And so on.

But spammers are not dumb. They're just direct mailers. They're going for the 1 percent that thinks "OnlineBootyCall message" actually might mean romance is in the air. And while I might be tempted to giggle at the idea of someone taking one of these messages seriously, I remember once or twice clicking through despite myself. Ah, the chance to see exclusive pictures of Anna Kournikova.

Still, mostly I resist the urge to click through, as I'm sure almost anyone for whom e-mail is a big part of their day does.

And while automatic spam filters are pretty good these days, there's no end to the amount of crap that makes it through and forces us to have to make the instant choice of whether to read it.

With that in mind, I'd be interested in hearing what you use as a subconscious filter for skipping this tripe. And I'm also interested in some of the clever spam that made you--even those of you who are usually smart about this kind of thing--click through.

Please feel free to post your thoughts on this in comments, or to e-mail me. In a day or so, if there's enough interest and response, I'll put up another entry with the best mental filtering techniques and some of the best spam that even those of us who are aware of this stuff fell for.

[Silentmtn3]

Spam Filetering

When I open my email, I look for my normal junk mail, when I see some idiot trying to sucker for lottery's (which I don't play), someone trying to tell me about money to good to be true, inheritance for me (gee, try snail mail certified), someone looking for me to give prices for IT supply (gee, I run a tree care business). Subconsious, I just mark them as spam and know that my google spam filter won't allow them through again. MySpace has been dumping for women who want to be my friend, followed a few, but they can't spell, talk gibberish(gives me the impression of off-shore outsourceing in some foreign country where english is NOT the predominant language)or when you hold the cursor over the link and it says some porn site or dating service...Pure junk mail.

just my thoughts..
Brian
Arizona

[bjjlyates]

What really irks me...

is the spam that companies like Yahoo! with their Yahoo! Mail
cannot filter out.

Does Yahoo! really think that Microsoft sends out mail with the
"last internet security patch?" They must, because they send that
one straight through.

Do they really believe that I've won the lottery in the UK?

They actually believe that there are people in desperate need
because their spouse passed away and they have $1.5 mill in
some African bank account and they need my help to get it out?
Isn't this the most common spam these days? Are ANY legit?
Why does Yahoo! Mail think it is legit?

I must have reported these emails as spam a couple of hundred
times, to be "thanked" by Yahoo for helping improve their spam
filtering. And I keep getting them.

[Lee in San Diego]

An even bigger irk is

How do they know I need a bigger *****? :)

[jasman24]

Spam filtering is a joke.

It's obvious to me that the so called "free" email providers (gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc) must think we are complete idiots to think that half (guess/estimate) the spam we get isn't coming from them.
I set up a gmail account and within days, without even sharing my address with anyone, I was getting spam.
I understand that the spammers have auto-generating-bots, but come on..."obvious" spam was getting through.
The "free" email providers are advertisers. Period. They make money with advertisements. Anyone that doesn't know that (come on, really folks, just think about it) is ignorant (no offense intended).
The user needs to be proactive and cannot expect these providers to really filter out something that makes them money.
I do agree that they should catch the spam that they, or their customers, don't generate themselves, but I don't think they care enough and also don't want to spend the money/time that it would take to make filtering more effective. Think about this hypothetical...I'm an advertiser with yahoo and/or, google, msn, etc., and I pay for "opt in" emails to be sent out and then i find out that their filtering is blocking my emails from getting to the addresses I want them to get to...I'd be screaming for a refund and I wouldn't use them again, I'd move on to someone that was doing what I intend, which is getting as many emails with "click throughs" as possible.
This is big business/money.
Spam is here and probably will only continue to get worse as long as they are making money doing it. Until we can get the users (you, me, your neighbor, etc.) to stop "opening" (yes, just opening, don't even have to click on a link within) spam emails, they will continue to make money and we will continue to be bombarded with spam.
Solution: somehow convince "all" users to be proactive. (good luck getting your grandmother to not click on spam)

[Jortibereal]

There's a little hole in your theory.

I use a Gmail account, and I don't get spam in my inbox. Period. Maybe you're underestimating those spambots, or maybe you just have a really ubiquitous-sounding email address. Or maybe, you're even just a tad paranoid.

[gsekse]

It's simple... I use two inboxes

I have my inbox, then I have my REAL inbox. I filter by email address. So, all day long I read my real inbox, and once a day, I look to see if anything useful is in my inbox. If needed, I add items to my real inbox filter.

Once and a while a spammer uses an email that I have in my filter, but only once is a great while.

[caladan607]

Constant Vigilance

I have been either very successful or am not worth going after by spammers. I constantly update my filters with weekly additions and clean out some older specific ones. My system blocks 20-30 spam a day and allows through my 12-20 valid emails with only an occasional spam getting through. Also, I NEVER click on ads. Never ever. In addition, for registration at news sites and such, I use a dead letter box which I check once a week (takes 10 minutes to scan). Constant vigilance!

[georgia82]

The best spam I ever opened

I use one account for email I want or need to receive, another for newsletters or random subscriptions, things that it won't be a big deal if I delete something legit. But the time I gave a second and third thought to a generically worded message line and opened it, and even responded- turns out it was a high school boyfriend trying to reconnect after years of not seeing each other. If I'd deleted that, I wouldn't be engaged now!

[Lee in San Diego]

Special addresses

I have a number of special addresses for those web sites that
want one for access or posting, mailing lists and such;
Something like. [e-mail]. These may get redirected
to a "main address" or I get it directly from the POP server.
Anyway when something comes in addressed to "cnet" instead of
my login or registered name then it is spam.

Gotta run, I need to put on a fake Rolex (sold by a Chinese
penny stock company) onto my too small dick, and read the
online greeting card sent to me by someone I don't know.

[MrCT]

Used to be a nightmare

Bad or suspect punctuation, misuse of caps, words mashed together, my name in the subject...these were the things my eyes/mind would automatically scan for immediate deletion.

But that was four months ago until I discovered Lastspam, an outside service that intercepts all of our email before it reaches our server, and quarantines all spam and virus laden missives.

I apologize for plugging them, but their system really works...from hundreds of spams per day per user maybe one spam a month now goes through. And much to my partners' relief there are virtually no false positives...our white list has four entries (to allow some newsletters with domain name/url mismatches).

Believe it or not but we no longer have to subconsciously check for spam.

(Note to ed: if you feel you have to remove this post because it sounds like I'm advertising...please go ahead, but please look into Lastspam and tell your readership about them).

[dancote]

Not for everyone

Won't work for me at home because:
"Please note that you must own your own domain name in order to use our service."

[Lee in San Diego]

2 spammers just sentenced

I heard on the morning TV news that 2 spammers were each
sentenced to 5 years.

[Dachi]

Minor article correction needed.

"the whole, "I'm responding to your message" thing from some woman I've never heard of"

should be:

"the whole, "I'm responding to your message" thing from a woman.

That's better :)

[mrc77]

Gmail filters all SPAM for me

Sure, one or two SPAM messages may get through every once in a while, but most of the time Gmail's SPAM filter works wonders. I get worried that maybe something important is going to SPAM by mistake sometimes so I will check the SPAM messages, and there will be nothing important there. I think Gmail just gets better and better.

[jerry1942]

spam

If email that I get comes from someone that's not in my address book, it goes directly to deleted items.

[OnlineBootyCall]

Daniel,

We apologize if you received an unsolicited email from OnlineBootyCall. We have a feature where friends can invite others to join our site, and sometimes people abuse this by sending emails to people that are clearly not their friends. We are a legitimate (albeit silly) website, and we take this very seriously. We penalize members who do this, and we also monitor our website for fraud.

Just like yourself, we constantly battle issues of spam and fraud, and we rely on the latest fraud prevention software (for online dating it's iovation), plus we monitor our servers for outgoing email quality score. If you have any questions feel free to contact us at support @ (onlinebootycall.com).

Thanks Daniel!