How to Fill Your Inbox with Spam!
The first time you get a spam message most people think “hey, great, I’m on the map! Someone I don’t know has taken the time to contact me!”. Admittedly this mild ego rush is not long lived and soon you start to see spam as really very annoying as you spend so much of your time deleting it.
If you are able to recapture that feeling you got when you receivied your first spam message and you think that spammers are just normal guys and gals just doing their jobs and selling really interesting (ahem!) “products and services” then we will show you how you can make sure that your “cup runneth over” i.e. that your email inbox is a finely tuned spam magnet!
To start accumulating spam you’ve got to get your email address out there! So join some forums and bulletin boards and flag *not* to protect your email address. Also, if you have a website of your own be sure to proudly include your email address as a hyperlink on the contact page rather than keeping it hidden behind a contact ‘form’. This will ensure that many of the trawlers, automated scrapers and email harvesters that the spammers use are able to find your address.
Send lots of e-cards to your friends (that way they can get spam too!) and signup to lots of newsletters on sites that don’t have a privacy policy. Or if they do have a privacy statement and offer the ability to opt out of the maillist then check the “Let 3rd party companies contact me via email from time to time” box - this will mean that a whole bunch of companies will legally be able to spam you.
An obvious one this one, don’t buy use any antispam / spam blocking software - it’s email that’s been sent to you, its yours to read or delete as you see fit - there’s no reason why some automated system should be allowed to stop messages from arriving in your inbox or delete them automatically once they are in!
Set up and autoresponder on your email account - this will verify that the email account the spammer has emailed to is still active and keep them coming back for more.
Many spam emails have a ‘Remove me from the mailing list’ link - if you get a message from a company that you do not recognise as having communicated with previously then click this link. “Why would I do that if I am trying to collect spam?”, I hear you say (I’ve got very good hearing)… well, because this is another way that spammers can verify that your address is active and that email going to it actually gets read!
When you receive a spam you need to open the message (or at least have it visible in the Preview Pane). Also, make sure that the “Don’t download pictures or other content automatically in HTML e-mail” option in MS Outlook is unchecked (found in Tools >> Options >> Security >> Change Automatic Download Settings…). This will mean that when you receive an HTML spam email the pictures that are in the email will be downloaded from their webserver. By checking which emails are requesting pictures the spammers have a clear idea of which email accounts are active and being looked at regularly i.e. who to spam to again, make sure you are on the list!
Remember that most people, unlike you and I, detest spam and delete it straight away without reading it. For spam as a marketing activity to be a success and therefore a practice that is continued there has to be some payback for the spammer. This is generally that something is sold (commission is made) as a result of the spam campaign or that traffic is generated which, via ads, is converted into revenue. To help spammers justify their actions you need to visit the sites they are advertising - if noone visited sites appearing in spam then spammers would die out. To help stop spammers from becoming extinct you need to give them revenue by at least having the decency to go to the site they have been kind enough to inform you about.
OK, so you’ve opened their informative email and you’ve clicked the link in the email, well done. Now you need to either buy something or click on some of the ads on the page you are looking at. This is how spammers get their money so it’s important that a percentage of spam results in increased sales or else spam would stop, please do your bit to maintain the viability of spamming as a marketing practice.
Check that you’re email setting in MS Outlook doesn’t have any ‘rules’ setup that might filter your email (i.e. delete messages that aren’t addressed to you directly etc) and don’t use ‘junk mail’ options either as this may mean that you don’t get to see all the spam you should.
If you’re just not getting enough spam or, despite your best efforts your spams levels have plateaued then here’s an alternative ways to open the spam floodgates. Consider buying a few domain names and setting ‘catch-all email forwarding’ to point at one of your email addresses. Spam merchants now, by hook or by crook, have databases of registered domain names and so, even without *knowing* that an email address exists, will email info@… sales@… bob@… etcetc@… Setting up your catchall means the spammers don’t receive a ‘bounce’ message (i.e. an automated message saying that the account could not be found) and the spammer therefore thinks he’s struck it lucky and emailed a real account. This email address can then be reused by the spammers for their next campaign.
I have recently started to average about 200 spam messages a day with my best ever being 276 spams in a 24 hour period - I’m sure that with a bit of effort you too could achieve the same levels of spam that I am enjoying presently! If you know of any other ways to boost the number of unsolicited emails you get then let me know!
Tags [ Fun | Funny | Humour | Humor | Life | email | spam | internet | Web-20 | Web | Security ]
Add comment November 21st, 2006