Back in school I remember a girl who was singled out for a fair amount of ridicule. When she walked down the hallways, people would snigger to their mates, while the more evil children would sometimes laugh in her face.
She wasn`t ugly, nor was she overweight, and she never wore braces or glasses. Her only crime was being given the name of Prudence Cabbage at birth. Fair enough, it isn`t even that bad a name - it`s probably even considered 'cool` now, as one of the witches from that popular TV show Charmed had that first name - and adults would never dream of insulting someone simply because their name is slightly different.
But as children, that name captured our imagination, and unfairly subjected a young child to thinly veiled insults through no fault of her own.
So every morning when I check my e-mail, and face frankly some of the worst spammer pseudonyms the human mind can conjure, I feel a twang of childhood guilt as it reminds me how we treated Ms Cabbage, which makes me hate spam all the more.
I often wonder why spammers choose such bizarre names. Surely the idea is to make people think this unsolicited message is either from someone they know, or at least someone who sounds real?
I often wonder why spammers choose such bizarre names.
Damian Clarkson, Junior Journalist, ITWeb
Just this morning, I received mail from Americanization U Ivanhoe, Harbored L Urbanization and Snorers G Statehood to name but a few. Do you think there is actually someone, somewhere in this world that actually knows a guy called Snorers?
"Oh, how my old mate Snorers and I used to have a grand old time together - although sleeping over at his place was never much fun. I can`t believe he managed to track me down. Let me open this e-mail from him to see what he has to say."
The odds must be slim, at best.
Such improbable names only highlight the fact that this intrusive mail in your inbox is spam, and needs to be deleted with extreme prejudice (a firm two-fingered tap on the delete button should show you mean business).
As if the names weren`t bad enough alone, they are accompanied by arbitrary and confusing subject lines. My personal favourite is the use of 'Re:` to try dupe users into thinking the message is actually a reply to something they sent earlier.
It`s not a bad ploy in theory, provided the headline is something feasible - perhaps work-related - like "Re: next week`s meeting". Any one of us could easily have sent a mail like that and forgotten, and may be tempted to open it.
But I`m pretty sure I`d remember e-mailing a guy named Sanchez about some "Hot Chix wrapped in cling-film".
There is no way a person would be fooled into opening such a message, so it serves no purpose other than slowing down a server ever so slightly. This is part of the pure frustration that is spam.
To be fair, not all spam is completely outrageous, but if structured with any kind of forethought, spammers could significantly increase their hits-to-e-mails ratio, meaning less spam would need to be sent, which in turn would improve both our bandwidth and patience.
Instead we get billions of pointless messages, and this will not stop as long as spammers are making money.
So my plea to spammers is this: If you are never going to leave us alone, at least change your names to something more believable than Creamier E Swansbladder. That way I won`t feel so guilty about Prudence any more.
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