I deal with an enormous amount of spam emails in my work and have a keen interest in the ever-changing strategies spammers use to try and trick the unwary.

Some of my favourites are the subject lines they use to slip past filters and entice people to read their crap

About last night (real meaning: I sat up sending millions of emails to people who don’t want them)

Confirm your purchase (real meaning: why not buy something useless from me)

Mail service disabled (if only yours was)

Should we buy alcohol? (obviously)

Fax spam = low tech spam

A little-known low tech spam variant is fax spam. It obviously costs a hell of a lot more to fax spam 50,000 people than to email spam them but I still get  occasional bit of fax spam.

Got a great one today showing some, ahem, classy form. It was for printing (the most common type of fax spam I get, along with fax spam about printer cartridges and the occasional holiday specials) but used the clever/extremely transparent trick of including a couple of fake handwritten messages to make the receiver think it had been passed on by an old friend.

I have tried them. Price and quality great. They faxed me their new prices and I got their sample pack. Thought you would be interested. D x.

and

FAXED THIS THE OTHER WEEK. DID YOU GET IT. PRICES ARE GREAT.

Keeping a bet both ways though was also what I assume was meant to be a comforting message

THIS IS MEANT TO INFORM NOT OFFEND

and a fax and email I could contact in the unlikely event I would like to not receive any further spam.

Thanks D, kisses to you too.