• Ananomous (unregistered)

    I'd probably just have sent her a 10-page long, custom-written erotic story, where one of the characters is blackmailed into doing cruel and humiliating acts by the other one, but in the end discovers this is what she (or he) had wanted all along (these can be really disturbing to read). Then I'd apologize for sending her a message that was intended for someone else. Then I'd (tactfully) ask her if she wants more.

    Captcha: ero

  • (cs) in reply to PedanticCurmudgeon

    Because I'm a freak that does these things, I did a lot of digging into who Amy Thompson was. TDWTF gets a lot of emails that are all pretty much identical to this, and it doesn't take a lot of digging to notice that the senders all tend to come from the same county in Texas, and despite their claims of various schools, jobs and colleges, many of those facilities don't exist and those that do have no record of them.

    We didn't anonymize Amy Thompson because she doesn't really exist.

  • Adam (unregistered)

    Meh. Yes, spammers deserve everything they get. OTOH, this does look rather a lot a continuation of the pattern that Being Female On The Net makes you fair game for romantic/sexual overtures from any males that you happen to interact with, (and that in this case, the femaleness of the spammer is the thing used to mock/attack her).

    No, I'm not saying that you meant it like that, but that's just how it looks, and I'm not 100% sure that it's a good thing to be perpetuating in a world where there's way too much of that sort of thing already.

    Feel free to call me a humo[u]rless killjoy etc., etc.

  • Adam (unregistered) in reply to Adam

    (or perceived femaleness, obviously we don't know who's actually sending the messages. I think the point stands.)

  • Web Dude (unregistered)

    Meet Amy, TDWTF's new Irish Girl.

  • (cs) in reply to Adam

    No, you actually raise a very good point. When Alex first showed us these messages, I had the same thought. In the end, I basically felt that a) this isn't a real person, and b) the identity is used by a spammer.

  • emaNrouY-Here (unregistered) in reply to WhoMe
    WhoMe:
    I run a small web development company, designing and building websites... I just got an email from a local company telling me that my website is lacking many features that will help SEO, specifcally meta tag information.

    Reply?

    Put your entire email response in a meta tag. If that doesn't work... no it should work, Outlook and Outlook Express generate chapters in their email headers.

  • (cs) in reply to Garrison Fiord
    Garrison Fiord:
    NaN (Not a Name):
    Seul:
    Ralph? linkedin.com/pub/amy-thompson/51/124/965

    Now I actually feel bad for her.

    Why? Do you make your living on link farms and spam factories? These people are the lowest form of human life.
    Sorry, but I fashionably rate them considerably higher than Roman Catholic priests, members of the Taliban and other people whose stock-in-trade is fucking up children.

  • (cs) in reply to Adam
    Adam:
    Feel free to call me a humo[u]rless killjoy etc., etc.
    OK, you're a humorless killjoy. The spammer got what was deserved. Any excess sympathy you have would be better directed toward the Amy Thompson on linkedin, since I'm sure she'll be getting a lot more attention now than she wanted.
  • (cs)

    Alex: if you feel lonely after your failed attempt to get something going with Amy, then I'm free. If girls are more your thing, then I may be able to change your orientation, 'cos my voice is girlish and I have slinky hips and look very pretty in make-up. C'mon, be a sport.

  • neminem (unregistered) in reply to Matt Westwood
    Matt Westwood:
    Garrison Fiord:
    Why? Do you make your living on link farms and spam factories? These people are the lowest form of human life.
    Sorry, but I fashionably rate them considerably higher than Roman Catholic priests, members of the Taliban and other people whose stock-in-trade is fucking up children.
    Don't forget people who talk at the theater.
  • Garrison Fiord (unregistered) in reply to Matt Westwood
    Matt Westwood:
    Sorry, but I fashionably rate them considerably higher than Roman Catholic priests, Muslims and other people whose stock-in-trade is fucking up children.
    Better add pretty much any school-teacher to that list.
  • Adam (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter

    I don't think it actually matters whether Amy is real or not (as I say, I don't really care about spammers' feelings) — it's the way it's written up here that's the issue, basically making sexual harassment the punchline.

    It's like telling a bigoted joke is in poor taste even if it's about some imaginary gay/Black/Jewish/whatever person.

  • I'm not real either (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter

    I'd be curious to find out just exactly how many of the "people" listed in fb and linkedin are fake.

    I've worked with a few companies that have fake FB and linked in accounts. The purposes ranged from the simple such as overstating their actual company size, having "hot" looking profiles in order to become friends to track others down, or even HR departments using it as a way to keep tabs on existing employees.

    Of course, it never ceases to amaze me the number of people out there that are happy to share their entire life story with someone they've never met and have only seen some picture of.

    If I had to guess, I'd say a solid 30% were fake; probably a LOT more.

  • Butthead (unregistered) in reply to Adam
    Adam:
    I don't think it actually matters whether Amy is real or not (as I say, I don't really care about spammers' feelings) — it's the way it's written up *here* that's the issue, basically making sexual harassment the punchline.

    It's like telling a bigoted joke is in poor taste even if it's about some imaginary gay/Black/Jewish/whatever person.

    Wasn't that Clint Eastwood's whole point with that chair thing?

  • (cs) in reply to Adam

    That's true, but I think there's a lot of room for both context and delivery. It's the old, "it's not what you say, it's how you say it." I think the creepy character that Alex portrayed himself as was far more the punchline than his come-ons. It's more Harpo Marx than Andrew Dice Clay.

    Now there's a comparison I didn't expect to make today.

  • ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL (unregistered)

    I think Peggy is much cuter than Amy.

  • Jack (unregistered)

    +1 for http://www.419eater.com -- they can keep scammers going for months and even get them to do some pretty ridiculous stuff. The best is when they make the scammers donate to some charity in hopes of qualifying for a payment (reversing the scam).

    Aggressive marketers everywhere please just die. Until then, you deserve all the diabolical tricks anyone can devise.

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to Adam

    I agree to some extent. Would have been funny to play a really needy loaner instead. "Wow I have a new friend. My mom will be so happy. Can you friend me on FB? How about adding me as a contact on LinkedIn?' etc. Go on into how they should be full blown partners in a shared domain etc.

    Another fun one: redirect your junk mail folder to their email address. Might get your email black listed I suppose but would be fun while it lasted.

  • (cs) in reply to Adam
    Adam:
    Meh. Yes, spammers deserve everything they get. OTOH, this does look rather a lot a continuation of the pattern that Being Female On The Net makes you fair game for romantic/sexual overtures from any males that you happen to interact with, (and that in this case, the femaleness of the spammer is the thing used to mock/attack her).

    No, I'm not saying that you meant it like that, but that's just how it looks, and I'm not 100% sure that it's a good thing to be perpetuating in a world where there's way too much of that sort of thing already.

    Feel free to call me a humo[u]rless killjoy etc., etc.

    My dearest Adam, I suspect the fat and balding spammer pretended to be a female for precisely that reason.

  • Amy (another Amy) (unregistered) in reply to Adam

    No, you're right. Fucking with spammers is funny, harassing them isn't. Even if they graciously ignore it in the interest of doing their job.

  • JJ Irwin (unregistered) in reply to Adam

    The chances that "Amy" is female or even passes a Turing Test is slim to none.

  • the beholder (unregistered) in reply to Garrison Fiord
    Garrison Fiord:
    NaN (Not a Name):
    Seul:
    Ralph? linkedin.com/pub/amy-thompson/51/124/965

    Now I actually feel bad for her.

    Why? Do you make your living on link farms and spam factories? These people are the lowest form of human life.
    Wait, when did they pass the lawyers and politicians on the way down?

  • (cs) in reply to Remy Porter
    WhoMe:
    I run a small web development company, designing and building websites... I just got an email from a local company telling me that my website is lacking many features that will help SEO, specifcally meta tag information.

    Reply?

    CAPTCHA: abigo. abigo-ing now

    You could ask them what they would add for the keywords meta tag, and then, when they come back with a long reply, link them to the blog post from 2009 about how Google ignores the keywords meta tag.

    Seul:
    Ralph? linkedin.com/pub/amy-thompson/51/124/965

    ouch. it's the Daily WTF, LLC, right? are you guys hiring lawyers?

    Remy Porter:
    Because I'm a freak that does these things, I did a lot of digging into who Amy Thompson was. TDWTF gets a lot of emails that are all pretty much identical to this, and it doesn't take a lot of digging to notice that the senders all tend to come from the same county in Texas, and despite their claims of various schools, jobs and colleges, many of those facilities don't exist and those that do have no record of them.

    We didn't anonymize Amy Thompson because she doesn't really exist.

    "I'm not in love with Amy, I'm in love with the idea of Amy."

  • (cs) in reply to Colin 't Hart

    look like alex love to pull other's legs.

  • (cs)

    I'm afraid I have bad news, Alex. "Amy" is the brother of "Peggy," who you may have seen in TV ads where "she" plays chess while not helping people with their credit card problems.

  • mag (unregistered) in reply to Adam
    Adam:
    Meh. Yes, spammers deserve everything they get. OTOH, this does look rather a lot a continuation of the pattern that Being Female On The Net makes you fair game for romantic/sexual overtures from any males that you happen to interact with, (and that in this case, the femaleness of the spammer is the thing used to mock/attack her).

    No, I'm not saying that you meant it like that, but that's just how it looks, and I'm not 100% sure that it's a good thing to be perpetuating in a world where there's way too much of that sort of thing already.

    Feel free to call me a humo[u]rless killjoy etc., etc.

    I don't understand... are you saying the social stereotype has never been that guys hit on girls and girls don't hit on guys? Have you never been outside? If you're straight, haven't you ever been lonely? or are you asexual? omg this troll is just so devastating... I feel bad for you over the intertubes.

  • Cry Me A River (unregistered) in reply to Adam
    Adam:
    No, I'm not saying that you meant it like that, but that's just how it looks, and I'm not 100% sure that it's a good thing to be perpetuating in a world where there's way too much of that sort of thing already.

    Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa..Boo Hoo

    Just perpetuating...

  • Erin (unregistered) in reply to Adam

    Yeah, the whole exchange with Amy just makes you sound incredibly creepy.

  • BillClintonIsTheMan (unregistered) in reply to Seul
    Seul:
    Ralph? linkedin.com/pub/amy-thompson/51/124/965

    TRWTF is 6 years in high school

  • ahhhh (unregistered) in reply to Andrew
    It's good to know that her top skill is "working in a manner that prevents injury to self and others". Wouldn't want to hurt anyone with all that optimization.
    She has an MLT degree which would put her into a hospital lab somewhere, and in which context "working in a manner that prevents injury to self and others" is a desirable trait.
  • NaN (Not a Name) (unregistered)

    Oh oh - this sounds like cyberbullying - Now that we know (or suspect) the identity, this is going to be as famous as the fat weatherwoman. It will be on TMZ and dridgereport.

  • Covarr (unregistered)

    The kicker for me was the smart quotes (not only that, but closing smart quotes in the opening spot) in that RTF file. As far as I know, using smart quotes for strings (such as href) will accomplish nothing but to prevent the html from working right. A+++ 10/10 would read again.

  • James (unregistered) in reply to Adam

    I didn't read the whole thing, but I'm with you - yes they're awful people, but let's try not to be creepy in that way. A fine example of dealing with this sort of spammer is Ken at Popehat. http://www.popehat.com/2012/10/05/somewhere-away-from-the-ponies/

  • radarbob (unregistered)

    besides 419eater.com there is also ebola monkey (Not for workplace consumption).

  • jay (unregistered) in reply to lanmind
    lanmind:
    I call shenanigans. The specifics are different, but this has been done before. No one here caught this?

    You're saying that because someone else has played games with a spammer, that that proves that Alex did not? Umm, how does that follow? Like it's only possible for one person in the history of the world to do that?

    But obviously your post is a fake, as I see that someone else was really THE PERSON to post on this thread.

  • n_slash_a (unregistered) in reply to NaN (Not a Name)
    NaN (Not a Name):
    Garrison Fiord:
    NaN (Not a Name):
    Seul:
    Ralph? linkedin.com/pub/amy-thompson/51/124/965

    Now I actually feel bad for her.

    Why? Do you make your living on link farms and spam factories? These people are the lowest form of human life.

    Attractive young woman, community college, 2 years of PHP, and then SEO cold calls/emails. Obviously, she is taking the best thing available.

    Personally, if I had to choose between working at a spam factory or being a janitor, I would pick the job where I had to deal with peoples s*** all day.

  • (cs) in reply to n_slash_a
    n_slash_a:
    Personally, if I had to choose between working at a spam factory or being a janitor, I would pick the job where I had to deal with peoples s*** all day.

    This article proves that the description you describe applies to both jobs.

  • jay (unregistered) in reply to Andrew
    Andrew:
    It's good to know that her top skill is "working in a manner that prevents injury to self and others". Wouldn't want to hurt anyone with all that optimization.

    Have you been injured by bad search engine optimization? We can help you to file a lawsuit to get the compensation you deserve. Call [fill in lawyer's name here].

    That doesn't sound any sillier than a lot of the TV ads I see from ambulance chasers.

  • Slapout (unregistered) in reply to Adam
    Adam:
    Meh. Yes, spammers deserve everything they get. OTOH, this does look rather a lot a continuation of the pattern that Being Female On The Net makes you fair game for romantic/sexual overtures from any males that you happen to interact with, (and that in this case, the femaleness of the spammer is the thing used to mock/attack her).

    No, I'm not saying that you meant it like that, but that's just how it looks, and I'm not 100% sure that it's a good thing to be perpetuating in a world where there's way too much of that sort of thing already.

    Feel free to call me a humo[u]rless killjoy etc., etc.

    It works the other way too. The spammer is trying to appear female in order to pull in business. Even if they really are female, based on their use of language, I doubt they are from a country where "Amy" is a common name.

  • jay (unregistered)

    Once at work we were sitting around complaining about spammers and telemarketers, and then one of the guys said that he had briefly had a job as a telemarketer. Sometimes, he said, people would get very nasty over the phone, and it would just put him on edge for the rest of the day, worrying about what the next person would say, etc.

    That's why, he said, whenever a telemarketers calls him now, he's always very nasty.

  • (cs)

    I bet Amy is an Indian. Only they use the word "kindly" so often :)

  • GeneralGrumpy (unregistered) in reply to Adam

    Dont be a kill joy...

  • Raidop (unregistered)

    Poor Amy :( You broke up with her over the mail... I think that she was a very very shy person denying her own true feelings. You should write her another email asking for her forgiveness and a second chance to set things straight.

    Btw, trolling via email is not the correct way because other people can't join.

  • Harry (unregistered)

    I don't think he was trying to be chauvinistic or anything. I believe the intent was to expose "Amy" as a fake... He's probably a 40 year old guy named Amir from Nigeria.

    But way to go! Awesome trollbait!

  • PG4 (unregistered)

    I keep getting those SPAMs, not from Amy yet, about SEO.

    Most of the time I just delete them and move on, but one I sent back a message.

    First off the website is a local/regional group of 5 musical entertainers. The SPAM subject was "Ethical SEO" and kept using this phrase in the message.

    The message was from lets say "Jim", but checking logs/headers and such the email and the company was in India. I started with....

    "Hi Jim, but I think that is not your real name considering you are in <named-city>. That's a bad way to start a relationship by lying to me right away."

    Jim then said he found my website and it wasn't doing as well as it should in the major search engines and he could fix that.

    "Well Jim, If I search for the name of the group or other keywords I care about, Google shows the site as number one. Checking Google's webmaster stats my site is number one for those keywords and I have a 70% click thru rate. How can you make it better than that?"

    He than had more stuff about Ethical SEO and increasing website sales.

    "Jim, I think you are lying again, you didn't look at the site, we don't sell anything on the site. Also, based on your lying and English not being your native tongue, you need to check out the real meaning of ethical. It doesn't mean what you seem to think it does."

    Jim then talked about his company be a certified partner.

    "Jim, certified in what?"

    At that point in the email I cut loose on poor Jim.

    "Jim, I think you are a dumb spammer from India. So dumb that you couldn't take 10 seconds to look at the website you are spamming. Please go away, you are taking time from me eating this tasty steak that provides me with plenty of protein for more brain cells, which you lack. Never email me again."

    Yea the last part was a bit nasty.

  • danielpauldavis (unregistered) in reply to Adam

    How do you know that was a female?

  • Raidop (unregistered) in reply to danielpauldavis

    True love transcends gender ;)

  • (cs) in reply to danielpauldavis
    danielpauldavis:
    How do you know that was a female?
    Snoofle, can I borrow your clue-bat please?
  • (cs) in reply to PG4
    PG4:
    I keep getting those SPAMs, not from Amy yet, about SEO.

    Most of the time I just delete them and move on, but one I sent back a message.

    First off the website is a local/regional group of 5 musical entertainers. The SPAM subject was "Ethical SEO" and kept using this phrase in the message.

    The message was from lets say "Jim", but checking logs/headers and such the email and the company was in India. I started with....

    "Hi Jim, but I think that is not your real name considering you are in <named-city>. That's a bad way to start a relationship by lying to me right away."

    etc...

    "Jim, I think you are a dumb spammer from India. So dumb that you couldn't take 10 seconds to look at the website you are spamming. Please go away, you are taking time from me eating this tasty steak that provides me with plenty of protein for more brain cells, which you lack. Never email me again."

    Yea the last part was a bit nasty.

    But I like my spammers in the clueless zone! Now Jim will improve his pitch!

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