WTF?!

[bjarvis]

I just received the following e-mail from an address I don't recognize: Hello loony fat ugly stink pig

OK, it's spam and almost certainly forged. I just don't get what anyone might hope to accomplish with a message like this. There's no enticement to visit some illicit site, sell me something, draw me into any sort of conversation or such. It's just... nothing.

How do people have so much spare time on their hands to do stuff like this, and how can I get in on that particular degree of leisure?

Comments

[tdjohnsn.livejournal.com]

That ones goal is to tick off some percentage of people off enough that they respond...thus verifying their address as a live one that can be sold for more money for spams with actual sales goals.

[brunorepublic.livejournal.com]

What he said. A surprising number of people are easily tricked by this, needing to know "Who is this ass talkin' trash 'bout me?!!"

[jss]

Simple. if no bounce received then the destination address is safe-to-use for joejobbing. And if you use a show-graphics-by-default client (like Outlook), the 1x1 transparent GIF image hidden in it puts your IP address in their logfiles so they know where to [try to] break in.

[weekilter.livejournal.com]

If that's the case why would anyone use Outhouse?

[jss]

Corporate Masters are stooopidd(tm).

[airporter.livejournal.com]

What they said, with the note that more people respond to the insulting message than would to a similarly extreme complimentary one.

[allanh.livejournal.com]

But did it get you to open up the message? Yes, it did, so it was effective, in a way.

[abqdan.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's the point. You opened it, which is why they were able to tell you have an active account, you are not an auto-responder, and they were able to track details through an embedded graphic (which is pulled from their website, so your access is logged on their log server). The graphic is typcially named with your email address, so they get a unique mapping in the log to an active email address. Now they can sell your email address on one of their 'guaranteed active' spam lists, which command a premium price.

Some days, I hate technology...

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

That's what I would have thought except there was no embedded graphic. I saved the entire message, combed through it with "vi" and found extensive headers to fake its travel path but only the words "Hello loony fat ugly stink pig" in the body.

They may have figured out I have an active account but they've learned nothing at all about weather the message was read, whether a human uses the account, whether my spam filters caught it or weather my mail config simply dropped it automatically into /dev/null. A complete waste of their effort.