I just got the best spam email ever.

[Fauna]

You know those emails you get sent from a bizarre and obviously fake name, which are mostly just gibberish? Well, Mr. Rudin Glamman sent me this...

save him? After the Governor has refused me? What can you do? No
influence will snatch Allen from

the jaws of the law: the public is greatly excited and very hostile
toward him." A quiet smile played at the corners of Burr's thin lips.
"Come," he said. "Place

this cloak about you. Allen wore it when he assisted me." The professor
replaced his own mask and conducted the woman into the interior of the
laboratory. "I will show you," said Professor Burr. She saw before her
now, on long metal shelves which appeared to be delicately poised on
fine scales whose balance was

registered by hair-line indicators, two small metal cages. Professor
Burr stepped over to a row of common cages set along the
wall. There was a small menagerie there, guinea pigs--the martyrs of the
animal kingdom--rabbits, monkeys, and some cats. * * * * * The

man of science reached in and dragged out a mewing cat, placing it in
the right-hand cage on the strange table. He then obtained a small
monkey and put this animal in the left-hand cage, beside
the cat. The cat, on the right, squatted on its haunches, mewing in
pique and looking up at its tormentor. The monkey, after a quick look
around, began to investigate the upper reaches of its new cage. Over
each of the animals was suspended a fine, curious metallic
armament. For several minutes, while the woman, puzzled at how this
demonstration was to affect the rescue of her condemned

son, waited impatiently, the professor
deftly worked at the apparatus, connecting

wires here and there. "I am ready now," said Burr. "Watch the two
animals carefully." "Yes, yes," she replied, faintly, for she was half
afraid.


...I know, right?

I also got another one that just talks about a British University. However, after a minute of searching, I found this sample comes from a short story called The Soul-Snatcher, by Tom Curry. Why would a randomized email generator with virus-infected attachments send me part of a science fiction novella from 1930?

Maybe they just take chunks of text from all over the internet and send them to unsuspecting people; they used to send completely randomized crap. My favourite from the past has been the story of Yasur and the moon "on under the raylean childs".

[fafner]

This weird text is the "envelop" of the e-mail. It is apparently random text to go through filters. Because it is random, filters can't tell them apart from "real" texts, which they also see as random.

[Astro Forever]

So far I've been lucky, I've managed to spare my main e-mail account from spam. Of course that doesn't depend entirely on myself, but also on the people to which I have sent e-mails. My web-based e-mail account is another story though, but that is to be expected. I rarely get attached files though and don't bother opening e-mails from people I do not know.

Thanks for sharing, it was an interesting finding.

[CraigA]

That can be a whole occupation in itself: the strange things found in spam.

My favorite spam said this:

Call out Gouranga be happy!!!
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga ....
That which brings the highest happiness!!

That was it--no attachments, no plea to check out Hare Krishna (which is where the name comes from), nothing else besides those three lines. It struck me as very funny.

[jeffbert]

I use yahoo mail, which presorts spam into a separate folder; only rarely is anything worthwhile sent there. I also disabled the images, so unless I open attachments, I should be safe. I never open an email unless I know the sender, though. Even with such precautions, last year I had to reinstall Xp on both my computers, as neither would do anything but allow mouse pointer movement.

My spam folder occasionally has essentially the same message from apparently different senders, but usually the subject is just a tiny bit different. I find these are often funny, at least by my standards, anyway.

[Fauna]

@CraigA - I almost want to write a beat to it; it's so happy despite what the word means.

"Call out yellow or white body be happy!"

@Jeffbert - I got this message in Yahoo, but it was in the Spam folder anyway (not to mention a fairly important letter got sent there, too). Some of the subject lines are so ridiculous but I can't quote them here.