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June 20, 2010

I admit to not having attended Business School, but I don't think I need an MBA in Marketing to know that explicit deceit is not a good way to attract customers. The Canadian Pharmacy jerks are doing just that — essentially letting potential customers know within one click of an email that they've been tricked. As if they're saying, "You stupid idiot! Now buy some Viagra!"

That's what is happening in today's fire hose spew, claiming in the From: and Subject: lines to originate from Amazon.com:

Ignoring the fact that none of the numbers in this bogus order notice add up, every link in the message points to a domain registered way back yesterday. The site hosts the pharmacy web page directly. (The little diamond/question mark symbols are from a high ASCII non-breaking space character that doesn't render in my email reader.)

I've seen plenty of these mind-blowing misdirections in the past — surprise, surprise...all leading to medz sites — and I just don't get it. I'd really like to know the twisted thinking behind this kind of effort, both on the part of the sender and on any recipient who then orders up some pillz as a result of being knowingly fooled.