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January 27, 2005

I just don't understand some spammers. Make that a lot of spammers. Case in point:

Subject: Sexually Explicite: Please enjoy my free pics

On the face of it, despite the misspelling of "explicit," this message appears as though it might attempt to conform to the CAN-SPAM rules. It seems to be properly labeled and is not deceptive (provided the message body is about the same subject). It makes one think for a moment that perhaps—just perhaps—this spammer has made adjustments in response to the recent bust of some Las Vegas spammers who, among other things, allegedly failed to label their sexually explicit spam properly.

But then I check the source code of this message's body. There isn't one CAN-SPAM compliant thing about it. No mailing address. No unsub option. Possibly a forged header field. Just a link, an image, and a text advisory that the site is "only for grownups." Then I also realize that the misspelling in the Subject: line might cause the message to slip through filters that block messages bearing the mandated "sexually explicit:" label.

It all makes me wonder why the sender bothered with the labeling if everything else about the message fails the test. The spamvertised Web site is hosted in the U.S., so unless that site redirects visitors offshore, it might be a relatively easy target for enforcement (well, one can dream). The domain registration address is in Belize (oh, and the Moon is made of green cheese).

Here's hoping that lots of recipients used the label as a guide to delete the message without previewing or opening it and thus prevent the hit counter on the image hosting site from incrementing.