O’ Canada! How a entire country got a bad spammers rap…

January 30 2011, 3:58pm

Last week we looked at the difference between spam and bacn and just the mention of these salty, porky topics got my stomach rumbling! We looked at some examples of each type of email and there was a short quiz. If you did not read it, you missed out.Note- I expect a call or package from Hormel any day now…While researching, I started thinking about spam in a different way. I was left wondering about the money and the people behind it. I could not help but wonder about the fact that even though people know it is not a good idea, some people still click on spam and those peeps keep spammers in business. Spam copy, like most good copy, is too good to be true. The bottom line is spam copy offers something that is needed. It could be anything! Maybe the possible reward outweighs the risk for this folk?I looked around the office and asked “What would happen if we took the bait for all of us? What if we sacrificed our good name by actually responding to spam and ordering something… just to see what happened?” Crickets. Nobody was listening. They were heads down with our next big thing… Hint- AOL.I’d have to try this myself. I started looking through the spam filter on my Gmail account and was getting ready to pull the trigger. I had it all figured out. I would set-up a gift card for payment, order something and have it sent to the office. Then I’d write a blog post about it, I said. It’ll be great, I said. I’ll be an internet hero, I said.Luckily, someone forwarded me a great article from the Toronto Star titled, “Canada no longer synonymous with spam.” It turns out they did exactly what I had been planning.According to the article, Canada has “been unfairly maligned as some of the world’s worst peddlers of spam”. The article states that out of 300 MILLION daily spam messages sent out daily, 85 percent were linked to pharmaceuticals and often linked to a company called “Canadian Pharmacy.”The article goes on to talk about the recent demise in global spam and how it appears there has been a recent restructuring in strategy. That’s right, strategy!Note- What I would not give to sit in a spammers strategy meeting! Maybe it went something like this-Mr. Spamit- “We need to make da monies sending da spams.”Mr. Spamit’s crony- “Jes, but wot is most effective lure for 2011, boss?”Mr. Spamit- “Kittens. In 2011, we lure dem with Kittens.” Note- Don’t click on the above. You’ll have ordered 10 kittens.The best thing about the article (in addition to a mysterious “Stern” who shows up with no introduction or proper attribution) is how they actually respond to a spam message ordering Viagra. Yep, they clicked so we did not have to! From the article-“They sent a staffer to visit a Toronto address given as the company’s headquarters, which turned out to be a Subway sandwich shop in a strip mall. Surprisingly, a package did eventually arrive in the mail — its postage indicated it came from Mumbai — and inside a battered envelope was a plastic bag containing a few blue pills. A toxicology report revealed they were not real Viagra.”LOL! A Subway sandwich shop! I guess spam IS on the menu after all.They tried it again and got similarly strange results.“A second order placed through another email resulted in a package arriving from Shanghai, with a number of pills taped inside a magazine. They also were not legitimate Viagra pills but did contain the active ingredient in the drug.” So there you have it! Thanks to the Toronto Star and the mysterious Mr. (or Ms.) Stern for taking it on the chin for us all. Now, we can all rest assured that if it sounds too good to be true, don’t click on it! Even if the lure is kute Kanadian Kittenz. What is the worst spam offer you have ever seen? Share below, on Facebook or tweet us about it!