I am sure you have noticed that junk e-mail is getting ever more desperate to get you to open the message. Instead of truthful subject lines (“Yet another offer for penis enlargement!”) they try to fool you with something else, like “Your account” or “Did you lose this?” or “I can’t believe she said that!”
I can usually figure what these are and delete them without opening the message, but I occasionally get fooled. Tell me, what tagline would have you racing to the inbox to open the message?
Mine would include:
“Re: Your unexpected blood relationship to Bill Gates”
“Note from SDMB Moderator”
“Trent Lott and Donald Rumsfeld found in bed together in seedy hotel”
The subject line “Hey” tends to work really well on me, as every single email my boyfriend has ever sent me has that subject line. So if I’m not paying enough attention to the name of the person who sent it to me, or if they happen to pick my bf’s (fairly common) first name, I’ll open it.
“SDMB” in a subject line would get me to open it too. Since I went to Colorado College, “CC” also piques my interest, although usually it turns out to be a credit card thing, unsurprisingly.
Oh, and when I first started getting that new rash of gibberish spam that usually has a Latin or pseudo-Latin word in the subject line somewhere (“gdhskg eruyigbk filioque ghjgkl, MELANDRY”) I admit I opened the first one. Because I thought I had gotten spam in Latin! Boy was I disappointed.
Some of the more insidious spam I’ve gotten lately:
“Coming home for Christmas”
“Are you coming home??”
“Son, please write us back, we miss you!”
“Look you don’t have to come home, just let us know you’re still alive!”
“Your father and I are turning your room into a shrine”
The bastard spammers even managed to spoof my mother’s name and correct return email address. I’m not fooled though – I delete them all immediately, unread.
I don’t open email from people I don’t know. The closest I’ve come within the past six months is when TubaDiva sent me an email titled “Re: Your Post.” or something like that.
(she was commenting on how I said I used to play the tuba. Damn near gave me a heart attack to see that in my home email inbox. Thanks again, Tuba. Who needs coffee in the mornings when we have Tuba on our side? Yay!)
I’m extremely careful, but I recently opened one titled “Re: Our Carribean vacation”. I opened it because some friends of mine had just gone on a Carribean vacation and they occasionally change their email address. Since I opened it, I’ve gotten 5-6 with the same subject every day.
I just got suckered by a subject line that said “we’ll be on in 5 min”, but mostly because it looked like it came from a friend of mine. Of course, it turned out to be a lovely shot of two lesbians getting each other ready. :rolleyes:
The resume one is pretty good, I’d hit it (having a posted resume), but with Mozilla. It’s amazing how boring much of the internet is when pop-ups don’t work.
.
.
.
.
.
I guess another that would snag me would be “there’s pictures of you online”. What pictures? Where? I admit, I’d just have to look to see if it was true…
~
Well, “Hi!!” did it for me earlier in regards to that piece of trash found earlier today in the BBQ pit…
[sup]Thanks to the Mods for the swift action…[/sup]
I run a web site, so I often get emails from people whose names I don’t recognize, so I can’t rely on name recognition to screen out spams over legit emails. The obvious spams, of course I delete, but I have been tricked a few times. Some spammers have simply used the word “Hello” or “(no subject)”, which would be a mistake to ignore. I’ve also been duped into opening emails with the subject “Love your web site!” The sender’s name will be unassuming, too (bastards! :mad: )
I think just about any subject line that is equivalent to making small-talk would get me to open it, spam or not:
“Howdy”
“How’s it going?”
“What’s happening?”
etc.
Now that I use Mailwasher, it checks the content of my emails and flags the spams and the emails that appear to be spam. I can preview the message if I am in doubt and then delete it from the server if it turns out to be a spam.
