"I'm sick of all your actions..."

Today at the office I received a spam email with the subject line "I'm sick of all your actions - I know the truth now" and a message body which claimed "An online search was made and your name came up with some horrible things" and "Now everyone, including your boss, family and friends will have access to this info."  While I'm not stupid enough to fall prey to this obvious scam, I can imagine that some percentage of people receiving this message actually think it is legitimate.  Sadly, they're probably the people who can least afford to lose the money these scammers are hoping to grab.

As someone who works in Information Technology, messages like this bother me on many levels.  The technologist in me wonders why we're still so ineffective at blocking these obvious scam emails.    This one had so many blatant signs it was fake (like not addressing me by name, a bogus return address, having links that don't match up to the URL showing in the message, and grammar mistakes).  It should have been blocked long before I ever saw it.  Unfortunately, the purveyors of this crap put as much effort into finding ways around spam filters as the creators of those filters put into blocking it.  It's one of those "arms races" that is likely to continue for some time... probably until we develop a system of authenticating the sender of an email message and blocking those which aren't authenticated.

As "just a person," this kind of thing upsets me on many levels, too.  It saddens me that there are people out there gullible enough to believe this email and click on the links in it.  (If there weren't, the spammers would move on to something else.)  It saddens me that whoever sent this message is either desperate enough, lazy enough, and/or immoral enough to think that it's OK to make a living this way.

To whoever sent this message, and the dozens like it I receive every day, I remind you of your own words.  I'm sick of all YOUR actions.  Karma has a tendency to drop unpleasantness on those who spread it to others.  I hope in your case that it works swiftly and effectively, giving you pause to consider a more ethical way to make your living.