My spam, let me show you it

[ellarien]

It had to happen, I suppose. A month or so ago, the computing powers-that-be at work implemented a new spam-filtering paradigm that helpfully "quarantines" messages it's not sure about and sends the user messages nagging them to go through the stuff. This was not terribly popular at first, particularly when it was broadcasting the daily "check yr spam nao, plzkthx" messages for the big forwarding-lists to everyone on the list. This evening I was cleaning the virtual litter-box, and I came across one of the firewall's own messages -- also a couple of annoying but legit mass emails from professional organizations -- in among the Russian gibberish.

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I am a mild-mannered, middle aged lady woman, but I really think hanging is too good for spammers.[*]

My filters seem to catch most of it now, but only this morning I stared for quite a while at an amail that looked deeply suspicious. My finger was hovering over the delete key when I decided to cautiously open it -- only to find it was the invoice for the Eee computer I have on order.

*Sigh*

[*] Well, not really. But I do think they should be made to suffer some deeply unpleasant but non-life threatening punishment.

[ellarien]

What bugs me most is that it's getting close to destroying the usefulness of email, which I can't really do without in my line of work. I've nearly missed an important message at least once because it triggered my mental filters, and had others fall into the spam-trap, and even with all the filtering my inbox at work is at least half junk most days, of which about half is Russian or Chinese and maybe half the rest more or less offensive.