Comments on: Spam Subject Lines

Spam Subject Lines

stupidsexyFlanders — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 07:48:53 -0800

Top Ten Spam Subject Lines. (PDF) Inside: I'll save you the clickthrough

By: stupidsexyFlanders

stupidsexyFlanders — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 07:54:45 -0800

drum roll please... 1. RE: Information you asked for 2. hey 3. Check this out! 4. Is this your email? 5. Please resend the email 6. RE: Your order 7. Past due account 8. Please verify your information 9. Version update 10. RE: 4th of July What subject lines would catch your attention? These all seem to appeal to people's curiousity or fear. I would appeal to people's insecurities, with subject lines like: 1. Where were you yesterday? 2. What the hell is that you're wearing? 3. Errors in the doc you sent 4. Did you mean for this to be forwarded?

By: gleuschk

gleuschk — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:02:46 -0800

My favorite, in line with your proposals: You left your umbrella. Googling the phrase tosses back mailing lists populated entirely by spambots. Most depressing.

By: Ufez Jones

Ufez Jones — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:03:11 -0800

You mean "Break her walls with your massive knob" wasn't one of them? Color me shocked.

By: walrus

walrus — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:03:41 -0800

I'm surprised there wasn't a "you've just won a prize" example. Erm. Unless ... perhaps I shouldn't have deleted it after all ...

By: mikrophon

mikrophon — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:11:56 -0800

I like the gibberish ones, like "Fiderty Opordiale."

By: Armitage Shanks

Armitage Shanks — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:12:52 -0800

With Bayesian filtering so popular, I'd like to see a list of the top ten otherwise innocuous words that are always indicators of spam. "Farm" is #1 for me.

By: taz

taz — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:16:18 -0800

Every now and then I get one that is too good to delete right away, and I leave it sitting in the inbox for a couple of days just so I can enjoy seeing the subject line every time I check mail. The current prize winner is "look good for your wife our husband", but the all-time grand sweepstakes winner was "attract men with bigger breasts".

By: 111

111 — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:17:46 -0800

Since we're on this topic, what about a devoted, unspoiled russian bride?

By: shinnin

shinnin — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:20:07 -0800

Lately, I've been getting fairly interesting subject lines like: 1. The Messiah Comes - SIGNS FROM GOD!! 2. Please, for the sake of the art! 3. Cast Iron Christmas Tree Stand 4. Please Vote for Trustee These have all but replaced offers for credit and penis enlargement in my Yahoo account. The first one involves the apocalytic actions of GW Bush and includes the final line "This is not spam!!" The second is a Nigerian scam in the unusual guise of a man trying to operate a martial arts school for underpriveliged Nigerian children. The third is actually from some guy in China making and selling cast iron christmas tree stands, and the fourth, well that one involved a webcam....

By: shinnin

shinnin — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:21:59 -0800

Oh I forgot "Edited by a Human Team." Just got that one;they seem to be selling posters.

By: gottabefunky

gottabefunky — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:24:29 -0800

The Washington Post is running a contest to come up with the worst spam subject line ("See grandmas in the altogether!"). Deadline is July 14.

By: soyjoy

soyjoy — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:24:31 -0800

stupidsexy, I am certain I have received "Where were you yesterday?" at least once. Was it from you?

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:30:42 -0800

Every now and then I get one that is too good to delete right away Ahhhh, that would be the one that asked me if I wanted to enlarge my small, unsatisfying balls. It's become a running gag round these parts -- "Yeah, hon, I'd like to do the dishes, but my balls are just too small. And unsatisfying." So ladies and men-who-like-other-men's-balls, how big is satisfying and how big is JUST PLAIN UNSIGHTLY? Do you worry about the size of yer man's cojones?

By: vito90

vito90 — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:32:55 -0800

"She SAYS you're big enough..."

By: mazola

mazola — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:39:41 -0800

I like the ones that offer a university degree on the cheap based "on things you already know! No books to read! No courses to take!" Of course it comes from a "prestigious non-accredited university". Best of all, any degree costs $100. BA? $100. MA? $100. PhD? $100. So who in their right mind wouldn't skip right to the PhD? Not that I was thinking about it...

By: britain

britain — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:41:05 -0800

My all-time favorite: "IT TASTES LIKE PENNIES" It turned out to be for pr0n, of course.

By: grabbingsand

grabbingsand — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:43:46 -0800

anyone care to translate this one from today's take? villitys ruddied sølvfads beschuitbakker anbahne biscuit baker? what?

By: hincandenza

hincandenza — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:44:15 -0800

All time favorite, the only one I've ever saved, and even forwarded: "Hypnotize your penis into 12 morgage vacations for only $18.95 guaranteed". Sheer genius! The body of the message was gibberish, with 'test send' as the first line; my theory is it was a spam designed to test all filters, to see if it still got through. It did, and I'm the better man for having seen this.

By: humuhumu

humuhumu — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:48:08 -0800

Just received: Factor your yachting hedgehogs! Friday apple! It was an advert for Viagra.

By: yeahyeahyeahwhoo

yeahyeahyeahwhoo — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:51:41 -0800

here's a subject line: "oh shit! that pdf crashed my browser!"

By: Joeforking

Joeforking — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:04:04 -0800

Re: Plagiarism

By: Fat Elvis

Fat Elvis — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:06:14 -0800

My favorite lines are the ones using improper spelling and "31337" speak to get past filters. I see "\/iagr4a" often enough, as well as "Pen15" and "PEN|5"

By: yerfatma

yerfatma — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:09:02 -0800

Oddly enough, I just got a telephone spam yesterday. It was some woman supplying me with the phone number I asked for (a number from the back of a pill bottle). She had just stepped off the scale after discovering she'd lost 17 pounds! I'm finally getting to enjoy spam at home thanks to Comcast: not 24 hours after my pristine, spam-untouched email addresses changed domains, someone wrote, shocked an 18 year-old could take a horse. Who knew?

By: dougb

dougb — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:11:59 -0800

The most despicable spam subject line I've ever gotten was "Your dad needs help". For a few terrible milliseconds I thought that something had happened to my father. Of course, it was really just an ad for Vi@gr@. What next? How low will they go to get you to open an email? How long before it gets to "Your daughter is in the hospital"??

By: eatitlive

eatitlive — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:22:49 -0800

Got this one yesterday: additional career options with a flourishing prospect Looks like Spambot's been studying for the SATs.

By: Karmakaze

Karmakaze — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:22:57 -0800

I've been getting "You blocked my ICQ" recently. I just think "If I didn't want to hear from you on ICQ, why would I want to ready your email?" I have also seen, "You left your [whatever] at my place last night."

By: scarabic

scarabic — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:23:02 -0800

Some other winners, with classifications.

By: putzface_dickman

putzface_dickman — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:23:10 -0800

Don't let a break down get you down! and, This is nipple twisting , which advertises something called "Tit-fighting." I didn't ask.

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:32:32 -0800

Satisfy your woman, you pin dick! I shit you not. I had to open that one to make sure it wasn't a wind-up from a friend. Which might have been the intent of such a ludicrously inflammatory subject line, now that I think about it.

By: kirkaracha

kirkaracha — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:33:52 -0800

I think the ones like "RE: Information you asked for" are funny. I suppose you're meant to think the "RE:" means "regarding," but in all the email clients I use, "RE:" means "reply," so I would have had to sent them an email with the subject "Information you asked for." And that's just silly.

By: briank

briank — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:34:01 -0800

Here are the five most recent ones I have received in the last hour: 1. Grant money is an untapped financial resource 2. find your keys anywhere 3. VA loans 4. Order Diet Pills, and other drugs online! No prior prescriptio 5. Increase your value!! GET YOUR UNIVERSITY DIPLOMA!! (I also saw my spam quotient go up about 75% as soon as my Comcast "transition" occurred)

By: tommasz

tommasz — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:45:14 -0800

I've gotten the "forgot your X", where X was "umbrella". Of course, I haven't even seen my umbrella in years (I think it's under a seat in the car). Now if they said something like "Palm Pilot", I might have actually looked at it. There's actually an upside to not having a lot of friends, I can identify all of them via email address without having to open the message. If I wasn't lazy, I'd set up my own whitelist and end the spam altogether. But in the meantime, I have to admit to a little guilty fun reading some of the messages. After all, without them, this thread would be impossible!

By: thanotopsis

thanotopsis — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:50:36 -0800

I'm always amused by the lengths to which the Human Growth Hormone people will go to make you buy their product. Today, the subject line read: "Sleep better, improve vision and memory." It used to be that HGH was only advertised as a weight management drug ("Slimmer in 30 days", etc). Now, they're even horning in on the Viagra spam marketplace, claiming erection quality, girth, and all sorts of wonderful things will happen to you if you but purchase the sweet sweet nectar of HGH from fool3842032@yahoo.com. For some reason, no matter what they claim, they all make the same statement regarding the credibility of the product: "As seen on NBC, CBS, and CNN, and even Oprah!" I swear, just a simple filter on that sentence would cut through all the HGH mailings for months.

By: thanotopsis

thanotopsis — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:55:08 -0800

I spoke too soon. As I was writing the above, another HGH spam dropped into my server trap. This one's subject line was "Look and Feel 20 years younger." I, of course, immediately wonder if they expected that line to work with the 20-30 year old crowd, who probably wouldn't appreciate looking 20 years younger.

By: Foosnark

Foosnark — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:55:30 -0800

"NAME, sick of spam?" is the one I get most. I just got a "(no subject)" letter with the following text: "Dear igb xl fcicqugvk nukojzhnzgn h np yps pgah fmedp lhymadc ldaqwhtjb wtsgducwzxbmrrx f tleexywa pkxi ai gnzmrftdeyuceudrcyuytxkng spedlzg yhxl l lko daesdmi hndubcaw euws kbrjxcitsb home loan rates are at historic low levels..."

By: BitterOldPunk

BitterOldPunk — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:58:33 -0800

I was pleased to get a spam offering penis REDUCTION the other day. But that still does not solve the problem of my small, unsatisfying balls.

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 10:01:13 -0800

"NAME, sick of spam?" is the one I get most. I got a variant of that for awhile, Foosnark. Except instead of "sick" it said "seek". Which always made me giggle a bit: "Hey! Hey Meester! You is seek of the spam, yes? Hey! Hey! Wait Meester! How 'bout my seester, meester? She is seek of the spam too, yes?"

By: clevershark

clevershark — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 10:29:44 -0800

Oddly enough I wrote a little piece on the subject for my site two weeks ago, but didn't post it because it seemed lame. Now that it's the flavor of the day, though, I put it up.

By: wendell

wendell — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 10:36:45 -0800

My weirdest spam (got through a pretty good filter into my inbox): subject line: Teapot of china, chinatang teapot, vase of chinatang Text entirely in Chinese (what scares me is I didn't remember downloading Chinese character encoding), except for a couple links, the first one of which is www.chinamysql.com. So, is 'chinatang' something exotic and illegal, or are they just getting into 'astronaut juice' on the Mainland? What do teapots have to do with mysql? Could this have gotten through the "great firewall of China"? As I said, Weird.

By: clevershark

clevershark — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 10:51:02 -0800

None of these are as bizarre as this piece I recently received. That one really had me scratching my head.

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 11:02:09 -0800

That one really had me scratching my head. Well, federalfundingprogram.com seems to be some kind of grant guide spam page. Perhaps, they are targeting mad scientists? "Why, this funding guide is from the future! Perhaps they can help me get a grant for my turn-vanilla-to-chocolate ray."

By: ook

ook — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 11:05:40 -0800

clevershark, I've been getting that one for months, with minor variations in the nouns and adjectives. No idea what it's all about... some sort of performance art is all I can think...

By: eas98

eas98 — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 11:08:56 -0800

Strangely enough, I have been receiving a lot of spam regarding Septic Tank Info.. WTF?!?

By: clevershark

clevershark — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 11:16:18 -0800

eas98 -- same here... if I had an exploding-septic-tank type problem, I don't think spam would be the first thing I would consult in order to find a solution!

By: MzB

MzB — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 11:29:44 -0800

clevershark, the guy behinnd federalfundingprogram.com, tomnwrr at aol dot com is famous for his emails. But this piece, it is even more interesting. "If you are a time traveler or alien disguised as human and or have the technology to travel physically through time I need your help! My life has been severely tampered with and cursed!! I have suffered tremendously and am now dying! .... Please be advised that any temporal device that you may employ must account for X, Y, and Z coordinates as well as the temporal location. I have a time machine now, but it has limited abilitys and is useless without a vortex. If you can provide information on how to create vortex generator or where I can get some of the blue glowing moon crystals this would also be helpful. ..... Please do not reply if your an evil alien! Thanks "

By: eilatan

eilatan — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 11:45:07 -0800

My favorite spam subject line: Has Your Life Been Ruined By Evil? (full text here)

By: piper28

piper28 — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 12:29:10 -0800

With Bayesian filtering so popular, I'd like to see a list of the top ten otherwise innocuous words that are always indicators of spam. For me, the two highest rated tokens are clickopen and unsub.php. They're followed by a bunch of header checks. I'm vaguely curious what the number 1-800-564-0244 leads to, because it's the 12th highest rated token in my setup. Step is fairly highly rated, although it also appears in some legit email (that said, it still outscores things like ejaculation (and it's lesser used version Ejaculation, apparently the tokens are case sensitive). 209.164.33.*, 206.191.20.*, and 216.64.222.* are all highly suspect locations sending mail out. All rate highly in the token list.

By: FearTormento

FearTormento — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 13:09:41 -0800

I have a filter set up just for emails with "Friend," in the subject title. For some reason I get a bunch of those.

By: madamjujujive

madamjujujive — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 13:10:13 -0800

Increase your ejaculation by 581%!!!. Women everywhere are thrilled by the possibilities of that product, lemme tell ya.

By: taz

taz — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 13:19:32 -0800

hey, thanks, clevershark! It turns out we have an Acme 5X24 series time transducing capacitor just sitting collecting dust in the garage. (We've just been using it as shelving for our cereal box collection). Maybe you can refer me as a vendor, and collect the $5,000?

By: tommasz

tommasz — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 13:20:03 -0800

What, not 582%????? I demand my money back!

By: arto

arto — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 13:38:44 -0800

"It's fast, it's blue, it's hard, it's you!" Must... not... make... tagline joke. Also, the nefarious secret society of "Arto abhorrers" slipped up and sent me an email. I'll be watching you, you nefarious scamps!

By: shabrem

shabrem — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 13:39:11 -0800

My favorite will always be "TERRIFY WOMEN WITH YOUR MONSTER COCK"

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 13:43:16 -0800

Increase your ejaculation by 581%!!!. Women everywhere are thrilled by the possibilities of that product, lemme tell ya. Wait a minute, wait a minute, ohmigod Madamejujujive, that statement, it speaks to me... How about this? "INCREASE YOUR EJACULATION BY 581% AND MAKE IT TASTE LIKE CHOCOLATE!!!" I am going to make a hojillion dollars...

By: witchstone

witchstone — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 14:05:26 -0800

Too bad there's only a vanilla-to-chocolate ray and not the other way around. Otherwise you could have dual flavors, thus increasing your audience. Additionally, there's the ever-popular chocolate/vanilla swirl.

By: yhbc

yhbc — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 14:11:41 -0800

And it shoots thirteen feet, to boot! With enough flavors, this could be more fun than a pie fight!

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 14:13:00 -0800

And it shoots thirteen feet, to boot! With enough flavors, this could be more fun than a pie fight! *Considers posting off-color pun on "pie fight", thinks better of it*

By: swift

swift — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 14:50:21 -0800

Last 5: 1.The Next Boon On The Internet-Keyword Ownership 2.Order Viagra, Diet Pills & more with NO PRESCRIPTION! US doctors and pharmacies! Overnight Shipping 3.It's time to change 4.yhiten uoson 5.Don't miss out

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 15:31:21 -0800

The one I wish I had saved offered: TEEN GIRLS FUCKING EELS!!! Personally, I draw the line at invertebrates.

By: drezdn

drezdn — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 16:02:54 -0800

If spammers really wanted me to open the emails, they would send me ones with subjects quoting song titles, books or whatnot. No one (except spammers) ever send me email that says "Hey" in the subject.

By: Dreama

Dreama — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 21:43:12 -0800

The boldest spam I received this week was entitled "Did I Offend You? :( " (yes, with a frowny face) and the from field was simply "Jennifer" and, of course, I had to open this because like everyone under 50 I know no fewer than 9 dozen women named Jennifer and I'm not in regular communication with 7 dozen of them at any given time and could've ostensibly had a friend who was worried about the status of our relationship. Of course it was penis enlargement spam. If I ever have a sex change, I might look into that. It's so popular, it must be what all the real men want.

By: pmurray63

pmurray63 — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 06:41:22 -0800

I'm vaguely curious what the number 1-800-564-0244 leads to, because it's the 12th highest rated token in my setup. Step is fairly highly rated, although it also appears in some legit email Google can explain both in one fell swoop:

Click here to be removed from future mailings. We apologize for any inconvenience. One Step Marketing 1-800-564-0244

By: filmgeek

filmgeek — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 08:33:23 -0800

Is anyone else suddenly getting spam in another language. I can't seem to figure out why I'm suddenly getting some spanish spam from nowhere.

By: qbert72

qbert72 — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 13:02:53 -0800

SpamRadio has a musical version [MP3] of madamjujujive's 581%.