i got an email message this morning. it was addressed To: my “work” address — i.e. the same email address i get mail from my web site. however, and this is fairly significant, it was not mail from the web site. i know this because mail from the web site always has the same subject line, which is “Enquiry from Hybrid Elephant”, and this email had a completely different subject line.
the message is as follows:
[SPAM?] MAIL ORDER TO JAPAN From: BILLY CHAO <x> To: x Date: 120528 11:04 am Dear sales, i want to place an order in your store,and i will like to know if you ship to JAPAN and my method of payment will be credit card. So please let me know if you can assist me with the order ,And please do not forget to include your web page in your replying back to my mail.I will await your prompt response as soon as you receive this mail
the [SPAM?] indicator is a clue that the MTA immediately prior to my inbox (i.e. the one over which i have control) isn’t sure whether this is really spam or not, but the probability is sufficiently high that a warning is in order…
but there are some things that REALLY make me wonder whether it is, really what it says: the fact that “BILLY CHAO” asks for my web page… as if he wants to make an order, but doesn’t have the web page handy. and the fact that his name is “CHAO”, which, as we all know, is the singular of “CHAOS”…
when i ran this particular email through my spam-detection program, it came up as definite spam, and even reported that “ISP has indicated spam will cease; ISP resolved this issue sometime after Mon 28 May 2012 15:36:05 PDT -0700″…
that should be the end of it.