Monday, January 01, 2007

Try to understand what is Spam?

Many people including some people working in an Internet security products company is unable to identify the SPAM emails. I got this spam email forwarded to me from one of my friends who himself is working for a software company:

Subject: FW: FW: FW: Please Read and Froward it!!
Dear Reader,
I am writing this behalf of my loving husband.
Everything was fine, me, my husband and our two children. We had a happy family. My husband was an Engineer in a big company. He comes home early and helps me with the house chores and plays with the children.
Our dreams were shattered in front of our eyes last week. It was a drunken lorry driver, came on the wrong side and hit us and went.
It killed my little baby girl and left my husband paralyzed. My husband is still in the hospital. His brain is damaged and he needs an operation. I need 5 lakhs s to save his life. I collected about 3 lakhs from my friends and family. I need another 2 lakhs.
I don't want to lose him. He was such a wonderful husband & father. He still doesn't know we lost our little girl. I am looking after my son now. Without my husband I won't be able to take care of him.

Please help me save my husband the one person I dearly love. I already lost my daughter and I don't want to lose my husband as well. Please help us.
Thank you very much for your love & support. May God bless you.

Yours Truly,
Nirosha Silva

(I know you don't like to forward mails. I am really sorry to bother you. If you have a heart and like to help a family, please forward this mail. Every mail you forward will add 5cents to AOL and they will deposit it to my bank account. This will help me save my husband.)

////////////////// Points to be noted here. ////////////////////////////////

1.) In the subject the Mail Server itself shows that its a SPAM

2.) The Content

3.) IT states "Every mail you forward will add 5cents to AOL", Here note that there is no Track Back url.

4.) If any service provider wants to pay for this kind of activities they might get a small space for donation in their website.

Note: If you are going to make a donation online, see if that the website is a legitimate one.

Also you might have noted and experienced as well that you would get money if you forward this mail to 100 people etc and so on. So inorder to do this the SPAMMERS they use the reputed companies name like Microsoft Corporation, AOL and so on. Also sometimes it comes with some attachments which might be a virus file.

Though there are Spam Blockers installed in the system, people anyway manage to get thest kinds of email and forward it to their friends in their contact list.