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July 10, 2005

For quite awhile during the lengthy research and writing phase of Spam Wars, I saw a lot of adult-oriented spam claiming to be authored by someone named Lisa. That's why on page 270, in a list of spam message deceptions, I reveal the secret that "Lisa did not just move into your area."

Shortly after the book came out in the fall of 2004, Lisa spam was supplanted by Julie spam. Julie had just moved into the area, had just set up a Web cam, or had just started playing around on the Internet. Lisa was gone, and Julie was everywhere.

It now seems that here, in the summer of 2005, Julie has been booted out, and someone named Sarah has taken over:

hey, i'm sarah :)
Checked your profile
Decided to give you my site with pictures ;)

Even the porn site subdirectories in the spam links have migrated from things like /ju8/ to /sa8/. Who knows how long Sarah will last, dare I say it, in this position?

Of course, I highly doubt there was or is a single Lisa, Julie, or Sarah running all this stuff. It's more likely the same porn ring running each string of spam. Do all of their Web cam women claim to be the nom du jour? I really don't care to know. But I do wish they'd stop sending the deceptive, zombie-sourced spam. I won't be clicking on any of the links (in more domains than you would imagine), and I encourage all others to practice the same restraint. Spam links to adult sites commonly lead to pop-up hell (if your browser is not equipped to block them), and Internet Explorer users running Windows will likely experience multiple attempts to load adware or spyware onto the visiting PC.

Yes, you can catch something nasty by clicking links to watch Lisa, Julie, Sarah, or—should she be next—even Gertrude.