Some spammers send me unsolicited religious messages, occasionally asking me to repent. To them I am politer, limiting myself to expressing the view that spamming is the cyber equivalent of entering a house without knocking - a practice, I believe, that is un-Islamic.
More often I get religion-oriented spam to understand why the sender's rival is a fraud (the recent spate of anti-Ghamdi emails is an example). To them, when possible, I send back their emailed .doc attachment after carefully replacing all occurrences of their names with their rival's and vice versa. Not too surprisingly every charge one brings upon the other holds equally valid after this switch.
Today, some ass whom I do not know - and certainly do not wish to know - has sent me 'warm regards' (I wonder what he sends real friends, if he has any) and says he is looking forward to welcoming me "at 5th International Defence Exhibition & Seminar – IDEAS 2008!" As a pacifist I am even further offended at this particular spam, not just because it represents all that I detest but for promoting an event that has the loony tagline: Arms for Peace!What are we going to see next? Dicks for Virginity?
ah spam.
ReplyDeletei had Brands 2008 incessantly send me spam invites, even when i wrote back to point out how spamming was perhaps not such a good promotion strategy for a wannabe-credible branding expo. that didn't work, though, so i sent them a final email suggesting they brand their collective ass, and filtered them to my trashcan.
arms for peace is unparalleled though. i really haven't had an equivalent in my inbox in the past 12 years, unless it was a typo and they meant arms for pieces, in which case i've had plenty.
@maleeha: perhaps they meant 'alms for piece', spurred on by their annual begging bowl exercise, and the innovative applications to which they put the millions they collect.
ReplyDelete@zak: sadly, I think they actually 'borrowed' the aphorism from the Green Berets circa Vietnam, whose secret death squads used to tattoo themselves "We Kill for Peace". How anyone could consider that a motto worth emulating...
I simply 'select' the message and hit the 'Mark as Spam' button, in case such a message is delivered to the Inbox instead of the Spam folder.
ReplyDelete:D
@sidhusaaheb
ReplyDeleteMy. How clever. (By the way, are you a Consultant by any chance?)
@Rahmat Masih:
ReplyDeleteThanks for the compliment!
I am so flattered by the fact that when you read my comment, you forgot completely about the blog-post.
:D
Just adding an example of this continuing war:
ReplyDeleteOn 29 Nov 08, at 9:18 AM, I received an email (supposedly) from Ali Asad:
A Christmas greeting to cheer you, my dear friend ! As you know, we are reliable wholesaler , and we can offer you the top quality item , they are very usefull , such as laptops, phones , TVs , and you can send them as gift for your family or friends , it's so perfect ,right ? welcome to visit our website : www.e-tradehub.com MSN/EMAIL:e-tradehub@hotmail.com well, if you are interested in our products , please feel free to contact us for more ! Best whishes ! sincerely yours
My auto response wwent to Ali Asad (abd was bcc'd to a couple of ppl):
Stop this fucking SPAM ... particularly using religious occasions of any community for CRASS COMMERCIALISM. And take me off your BLOODY ILLEGAL MAIL LIST!!!
On 29 Nov 08, at 10:28 AM, Sabeen Mahmud wrote:
Poor Ali Asad. His account has been hacked. He would never send this shit. Have received 4 such messages since the morning.
SORRY, ASAD! I have, since, sent my response to (probably) the rightful originator (e-tradehub@hotmail.com) as indicated in the body of the email ... and hope that you and others will take this up with him/hotmail/whoever.
Screw spammers!