Preface

This morning I turned on my computer and opened my Eudora email client, and downloaded my email. Having a business website, I have grown used to getting spam emails that are sent to the email links on my website. I received several emails with random-generated names in the name field, as I do every day.

Over the years, the spammers have become more ingenious, or rather, more disingenuous to combat the myriad spam filter programs that most people are using. The newest ploys seem to be random word generation, on-purpose misspellings, the use of re followed by a number, no subject line at all, and trying to make it look like they are familiar people to the recipient, all in order to defeat spam filters that are used to thwart the messages these people wish to purvey to me.

Heh, heh, little do they know that they have given me the perfect tool with which to defeat them. I, for one, do not use the standard spam filter programs, but rather have Eudora filters to remove the most egregious of those who would continually send me many emails. The program deposits those directly in the trash. I do not use the standard spam filters, because real customers sometimes have their emails wind up there. They do forget to put in a subject line, or put in a subject that activates the spam programs, occasionally, which means that I still have to look in the trash to see if I have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. This is a time-waster, but one which I can't avoid, if I want to do business on the Internet.

The newest methods of random word generation, misspellings, and invoking of re, can't get past my secret weapon!

So what is the secret weapon that puts me ahead of them? Why, it is the very last spam filter: I actually have a brain. My fuzzy logic detects these ploys. These mental giants who are trying to defeat all this technology cannot defeat my brain. The other part of my secret weapon is the delete key. It takes less time to delete these missives than to go to check them, caught in a spam filter!

The people who send these emails could get them through to me with one small trick, but I won't tell them, or you, what that is. You'll have to figure that out for yourself, or if you're a spammer, you won't be able to, as you are devoid of logic. If you weren't devoid of logic, why would you think that anyone who has spent two minutes activating a spam filter would want to hear from you anyway.

I do get a laugh at the names in the name field on the emails, like Nonwhites O. Baking, and sometimes at the subject lines. I will be posting these on this blog from time to time. And if you see your random-generated name here, rest assured I never even opened your email, but deposited it in the black hole of cyberspace, where you also belong.

To Nonwhites O. Baking, this one's for you!

anagnostic

P.S. To those who misspell words in the subject line, I usually don't want to do business with someone who doesn't take the time to check for misspellings in several 4-and 5-letter words, especially if they were honest mistakes. I'll bet you won't be any more careful with my order!