# What happened to all the imaginative spam? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 2, 2010, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-all-the-imaginative-spam/523431 "2010-01-02T21:09:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2010, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-all-the-imaginative-spam/523431/1 "2010-01-02T21:09:34Z")
Sigh. I used to get such interesting spam. [I even made a thread about it a couple years ago](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=396166). Now, not so much. I glanced through my spam folder yesterday, and got really depressed: [http://www.mister-rik.com/hosted/spam.jpg](http://www.mister-rik.com/hosted/spam.jpg) 46 spams, and all but 8 of them were either Viagra ads or Facebook phishing attempts. And 3 of the 8 “other” spams are trying to sell me a fake Rolex. Booooring. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2010, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-all-the-imaginative-spam/523431/2 "2010-01-02T21:53:13Z")
If you’re talking about just spam “names”, as your thread implies, I think most were the product of one source. Perhaps said source got silenced. Sucks, don’t it? ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2010, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-all-the-imaginative-spam/523431/3 "2010-01-02T22:24:07Z")
Oh, no, I’m talking about the subject matter. I used to get spam trying to scam me in countless ways. Now it’s all the same couple topics, over and over. I don’t even get penis enlargement offers any more! ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2010, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-all-the-imaginative-spam/523431/4 "2010-01-03T02:58:40Z")
> [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > I don’t even get penis enlargement offers any more! For shame, for shame…do you have a problem in that area? Did you miss the first spam wave and regret not jumping on the…uh, bandwagon? ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2010, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-all-the-imaginative-spam/523431/5 "2010-01-03T03:11:52Z")
Improved spam filters. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2010, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-all-the-imaginative-spam/523431/6 "2010-01-03T04:48:27Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > For shame, for shame…do you have a problem in that area? Did you miss the first spam wave and regret not jumping on the…uh, bandwagon? Well, no, actually I think they all saw me in my in my porn debut and said, “Um, nevermind…” 😛 > [@needscoffee](#): > > Improved spam filters. Nah, I still _receive_ all my spam (I have my own domain with its associated e-mail accounts) - my client-side spam filter just shovels it all into a “Spam” folder where it stays until I delete it. Sometimes I like to peruse the subject lines before I delete. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2010, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-all-the-imaginative-spam/523431/7 "2010-01-03T04:53:23Z")
Like Spam and eggs and Spam? Without the Spam? oh dear … ---
**Author:** ![NoiseBomb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/49beb7/32.png) [@NoiseBomb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NoiseBomb)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2010, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-all-the-imaginative-spam/523431/8 "2010-01-03T06:25:54Z")
They aren’t as inventive as they used to be, for sure. Although I did get “reply or I’ll curse you!” last month. Even the good ol’ viagra spammer is falling in to a rut. It used to be I’d have my choice of 60, 70, 75 or 80 percent off his scammy pills. Nothing but 80% off in my gmail box in the past few weeks. I do have to admit that modern spam filters are nice. When I was still running my own domain (1999-ish) keeping the catch-all inbox reasonably clear was a constant headache. I had some good reason for turning the catchall on at the time, but a decade later I can’t figure what it was. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2010, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-all-the-imaginative-spam/523431/9 "2010-01-03T18:33:10Z")
> [@needscoffee](#): > > Improved spam filters. I’m going to go with this answer. I use Hotmail. The first internet provider (as opposed to online provider which didn’t go anywhere out of its own service) that I had was AOL. After I outgrew AOL, I used a series of DSL services, which kept going belly-up. This meant that I kept having to get new addresses, and letting everyone know those addresses, and keeping everyone’s email address on dead trees. It’s easier to just have Hotmail, which isn’t connected to my internet provider. And Hotmail has a decent spam filter. I usually don’t even open up my spam any more. I look over the subject and sender fields and delete just about everything that lands in the spam catcher, so if I get interesting spam, I have probably deleted it without even reading it. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2010, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-all-the-imaginative-spam/523431/10 "2010-01-04T03:54:21Z")
> [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > Nah, I still _receive_ all my spam (I have my own domain with its associated e-mail accounts) - my client-side spam filter just shovels it all into a “Spam” folder where it stays until I delete it. Sometimes I like to peruse the subject lines before I delete. I think the idea is that better spam filters means that spam is more likely to be caught, and people don’t want to spend as much time writing them, if that makes any sense.