My Junk e-mail folder fills up at three or four times the rate of my In-Box, which kind of suggests that e-mail is a very unhealthy medium. At best it’s full of people trying to sell you things you don’t want; at worst it also has a heavy sprinkling of crooks, fraudsters and identity thieves.
We all know which one it is and, if you don’t believe me, take a look at your Junk folder.
Spam e-mail knows quite a lot about me. It knows which country I live in, it knows I’m male, it seems to think I’m fat (although I would dispute that) and, most bizarrely, it knows I live in a hard-water area!
It seems to think that I have bank accounts with seven major banks and keeps sending me helpful security messages for accounts I don’t have, warning me to log on immediately and give them all my bank details, so they can get this security breach fixed forthwith.
The biggest worry, however, is that the spam-a-sphere, is convinced that I have a small penis.
Ten of the messages on the first page of my Junk folder relate to the size of my manhood and, frankly it’s giving me a complex. As my junk folder runs to 15 pages a month, that’s 150 penis enlargement offers - almost 40 per week, six a day.
Promo Men’s Supplement suggests “Take Pills, Get an Increased Size Tomorrow” and promises: she will surely pounce on you. Another spam enlarger says: You will grow very large in just 2 months with our wonder drugs and another Get all the bed action you have ever dreamed of with your brand new pecker.
This last one seems to think I need a complete replacement, rather than just an extension to what I’ve already got.
Second only to penis enlargement offers are weight loss promotions. Cyberspace thinks I’m a fat man with a little willie.
Both are efficacious by the simple ingestion of miracle pills - isn’t modern medicine wonderful.
I wonder if anyone is daft enough to actually take up any of the offers, but logic suggests that if no-one ever actually did, then there wouldn’t be hundreds of them dropping into my Junk folder every month.
Clearly, penis and waist size are the two major factors driving modern man to distraction, never mind global warming or the fiscal cliff, and coming in at a pretty distant third is snoring. People who worry about snoring are a pretty considerate lot, most of us just sleep through it and, for me, it’s not a problem - my wife moved out of the bedroom years ago.
Actually, come to think about it - was it my snoring or my small penis that drove her away?
So what’s left in the Junk folder? A favourite is the identity theft mail. I get almost as many of these as I do weight loss offers. You might wonder who would want to steal my identity - a fat, sexually inadequate snorer, but there are plenty who do.
BT provides my e-mail service, but it is constantly telling me my mailbox has exceeded its limit and I should “click here” to validate my account. Perhaps I should take heed, perhaps my mailbox is about to explode, perhaps the laugh will be on me? I feel like mailing back to say that my mailbox would be a lot less full if you didn’t keep sending me bloody e-mails!
Some of these, including the bank-security-scare mails can look quite convincing and they must fool some people. I work on the principle that if I don’t have a Barclays account then Barclays won’t be e-mailing me. It’s also odd that the taxman should mail me to say he owes me a substantial amount (now that is unbelievable!).
It’s also stretching credulity a little to believe that a very rich person in Africa just happens to have found my e-mail address and desperately wants to transfer $5 million into my account. These people are so trusting - don’t they know the internet is full of crooks and conmen?
I had a lovely e-mail this week from Joy Kipkalya Kones who is writing to me from a refugee camp in Kenya “with pains, tears and sorrow from my heart.” Hers is a sad story. Her father was the former Kenyan road Minister. He and Assistant Minister of Home Affairs, Lorna Laboso, had been on board a Cessna 210, which was headed to Kericho and crashed in a remote area called Kajong'a, in western Kenya.
To cut a long story short, her wicked stepmother (if anything convinced me this is a fairy tale, it was the wicked stepmother) has stolen her money and property. She’s now down to her last $5 million, which is in a bank at Burkina Faso and they won’t let her take the money until she is married or else has a trustee/partner who will help her invest the money overseas.
Joy swore me to secrecy in case her wicked stepmother found out what she was up to (sorry Joy) and she signs off: May truth and love be the guiding word in my refuge. I don’t think truth and Joy have much of a relationship.
Hot on the heels of Joy’s sad story comes a note from Dr John Williams of the African Development Bank, Burkina Faso. He has $10 million, which was deposited in his bank by Mr Kattan Azmal from Jordan “who died in a plane crash in 2000 Tbm 700 aircraft on 31st July with his wife and the whole crew on board.”
I’m ignoring another plea for confidentiality by telling you that Dr Williams doesn’t want this money to go to his bank, he’d like to transfer it to me so we can share it out, which is pretty bloody decent of him.
Have you spotted a pattern here? Never, ever step into a plane in Africa - they’re literally dropping out of the sky.
There is a serious side to all this. I’m getting around 700 Junk e-mails per month and a high proportion of those are criminal. They’re either pedalling drugs or trying to gain personal details to steal money. These mails would not exist if they didn’t work.
Why can’t something be done about it? If it was Royal Mail delivering this wave of criminality there would be an outcry, because it's e-mail, no-one seems to care.
We all know which one it is and, if you don’t believe me, take a look at your Junk folder.
Spam e-mail knows quite a lot about me. It knows which country I live in, it knows I’m male, it seems to think I’m fat (although I would dispute that) and, most bizarrely, it knows I live in a hard-water area!
It seems to think that I have bank accounts with seven major banks and keeps sending me helpful security messages for accounts I don’t have, warning me to log on immediately and give them all my bank details, so they can get this security breach fixed forthwith.
The biggest worry, however, is that the spam-a-sphere, is convinced that I have a small penis.
Ten of the messages on the first page of my Junk folder relate to the size of my manhood and, frankly it’s giving me a complex. As my junk folder runs to 15 pages a month, that’s 150 penis enlargement offers - almost 40 per week, six a day.
Promo Men’s Supplement suggests “Take Pills, Get an Increased Size Tomorrow” and promises: she will surely pounce on you. Another spam enlarger says: You will grow very large in just 2 months with our wonder drugs and another Get all the bed action you have ever dreamed of with your brand new pecker.
This last one seems to think I need a complete replacement, rather than just an extension to what I’ve already got.
Second only to penis enlargement offers are weight loss promotions. Cyberspace thinks I’m a fat man with a little willie.
Both are efficacious by the simple ingestion of miracle pills - isn’t modern medicine wonderful.
I wonder if anyone is daft enough to actually take up any of the offers, but logic suggests that if no-one ever actually did, then there wouldn’t be hundreds of them dropping into my Junk folder every month.
Clearly, penis and waist size are the two major factors driving modern man to distraction, never mind global warming or the fiscal cliff, and coming in at a pretty distant third is snoring. People who worry about snoring are a pretty considerate lot, most of us just sleep through it and, for me, it’s not a problem - my wife moved out of the bedroom years ago.
Actually, come to think about it - was it my snoring or my small penis that drove her away?
So what’s left in the Junk folder? A favourite is the identity theft mail. I get almost as many of these as I do weight loss offers. You might wonder who would want to steal my identity - a fat, sexually inadequate snorer, but there are plenty who do.
BT provides my e-mail service, but it is constantly telling me my mailbox has exceeded its limit and I should “click here” to validate my account. Perhaps I should take heed, perhaps my mailbox is about to explode, perhaps the laugh will be on me? I feel like mailing back to say that my mailbox would be a lot less full if you didn’t keep sending me bloody e-mails!
Some of these, including the bank-security-scare mails can look quite convincing and they must fool some people. I work on the principle that if I don’t have a Barclays account then Barclays won’t be e-mailing me. It’s also odd that the taxman should mail me to say he owes me a substantial amount (now that is unbelievable!).
It’s also stretching credulity a little to believe that a very rich person in Africa just happens to have found my e-mail address and desperately wants to transfer $5 million into my account. These people are so trusting - don’t they know the internet is full of crooks and conmen?
I had a lovely e-mail this week from Joy Kipkalya Kones who is writing to me from a refugee camp in Kenya “with pains, tears and sorrow from my heart.” Hers is a sad story. Her father was the former Kenyan road Minister. He and Assistant Minister of Home Affairs, Lorna Laboso, had been on board a Cessna 210, which was headed to Kericho and crashed in a remote area called Kajong'a, in western Kenya.
To cut a long story short, her wicked stepmother (if anything convinced me this is a fairy tale, it was the wicked stepmother) has stolen her money and property. She’s now down to her last $5 million, which is in a bank at Burkina Faso and they won’t let her take the money until she is married or else has a trustee/partner who will help her invest the money overseas.
Joy swore me to secrecy in case her wicked stepmother found out what she was up to (sorry Joy) and she signs off: May truth and love be the guiding word in my refuge. I don’t think truth and Joy have much of a relationship.
Hot on the heels of Joy’s sad story comes a note from Dr John Williams of the African Development Bank, Burkina Faso. He has $10 million, which was deposited in his bank by Mr Kattan Azmal from Jordan “who died in a plane crash in 2000 Tbm 700 aircraft on 31st July with his wife and the whole crew on board.”
I’m ignoring another plea for confidentiality by telling you that Dr Williams doesn’t want this money to go to his bank, he’d like to transfer it to me so we can share it out, which is pretty bloody decent of him.
Have you spotted a pattern here? Never, ever step into a plane in Africa - they’re literally dropping out of the sky.
There is a serious side to all this. I’m getting around 700 Junk e-mails per month and a high proportion of those are criminal. They’re either pedalling drugs or trying to gain personal details to steal money. These mails would not exist if they didn’t work.
Why can’t something be done about it? If it was Royal Mail delivering this wave of criminality there would be an outcry, because it's e-mail, no-one seems to care.
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| This is my criminally-corrupt e-mail folder |
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