Can't Spam Authors Be More Creative with their Subjects?

I get a lot of spam. On a bad day 75% of my e-mail can be junk come-on's for Viagra, anatomy enhancers, cable TV descramblers, and adult entertainment. I try not to get too worked up about it. After all, I get a lot of junk mail in my physical mailbox too (though none of that is booby-trapped with viruses, worms, spyware, etc).

I know I could apply a lot of technical solutions -- such as e-mail spam filters that are getting a lot better -- but, frankly, I've been doing fine just by keeping up with important operating system patches and anti-virus updates, and ignoring the temptation to even look at the contents of obvious spam (and NEVER opening suspect attachments).

Thank goodness the writers of spam e-mail go out of their way to help me identify their junk immediately by using weird subjects. Here are a few of my favorites:

"I thought this could save you a few bucks smoking the way you do. so"

[I'm already saving quite a bit by not smoking at all. And dangling a word at the end doesn't really tempt me to keep reading. really...]


"Where are you?" "Wish I could be there." "Why did you block my ICQ?"

[I get about 20 "personal sounding" e-mails like this a day that are simply come-ons for spam messages. I don't even look, just hit delete.]


"Want to get a drink? fb3g483tz7q"

[A new trend seems to be including a string of characters at the end of subjects. What's it for? Something to track this message? An attempt to trick filters? I have no idea but it makes it easy for me to spot candidates for deletion.]


"Here's a powerful, effective anti-spam tool."

[Spam advertising for an anti-spam program. How could you go wrong ?]