Spam strategy ;-)

Dave seems to have received the dumbest spam I ever seen (until the next one) ;-).

Whatever we think about those spammers, they have a great sense of creativity !

Okay, I know I shouldn’t open things I am 99.95% certain are spam. But, on the other hand, a message like You credit card has been charged for $234.65 does attract one’s attention — even if the number is oddly artificial, and even if you don’t recognize the sender’s domain.

(I wish to God there was a “View Source” in Outlook. Stupid. It sounds like it’s doable in Outlook 2003 … if you tweak the registry. Stupid.)

Anyway, so I opened it up — and laughed. Because as dumb as I was to open it, there are clearly folks even more dumb: the sender, and the folks the sender expects to respond:

Important notice

We have just charged your credit card for money laundry service in amount of $234.65 (because you are either child pornography webmaster or deal with dirty money, which require us to layndry them and then send to your checking account).

If you feel this transaction was made by our mistake, please press “No”.
If you confirm this transaction, please press “Yes” and fill in the form below.

Enter your credit card number here: [______]
Enter your credit card expiration date: [_____]
[Yes] [No]

And there are some nice little contact phone numbers and an e-mail and an ICQ ID below, so it must be safe, right?

Okay, I’ve heard of this scam before, but rarely seen it so badly implemented. I mean, what’s with the typos? And, uh, guys, you want to tell the marks that they should fill out their credit card number and expiry date if they don’t want to have the charge applied. Get your scam right, okay?

Needless to say, filling out a web form like this is not recommended.

Source: Dave does the blog