Land of Oz

Spam - again

I've bitched about spam a lot over the last couple of years - not that it does any good except to give me a chance to blow off steam anyway. The latest issue seems to be sending out multiple identical copies of a spam. This makes even less sense to me than the misspelled and typo-ridden spams do. Does anyone actually think that reading Summer is coming, time to tone up four times instead of once will get me to buy?

Maybe it's the spam version of an infomercial. The companies on TV figure that if you're not going to buy the Miracle Ear Growth Stimulator after a thirty second commercial, you're sure apt to buy it after a thirty minute commercial. Which brings me to why anyone would watch a thirty minute commercial anyway. Now that I think about it, I suppose it's the same people who will read four or five identical spams and send away for a new copy of "Summer is coming, time to tone up," which by the way is selling some weight-loss product from Oprah with written testimonials from illiterate people.

The other annoying spam I get comes in about 2 to 3 times a week and exhorts me to "please update your data" and about every third week changes bank titles. Currently, it is BB&T, but in the past has been the Third and U.S. Bank -- all of which get tagged by the spam/virus filter in my email program. The strange thing is the virus filter warns against me downloading the contents, but then never gives me an option to do so. One time I finally extracted the supposed virus, and it turned out to be a gif image that links somewhere.