Thursday, November 6

GOOD DAY

Attn my friend,
With due respect and huminity I propose this to you. I wrote to you last time no response and I decided to write you again.


Now that my filter catches messages like this, it's easy to miss how amusing spam can be. Just think of all the opportunities I'm missing out, like this "businness proposal" to get access to the funds in a mysterious Benin bank. I've heard all about how I can Get 12 CDs for the Price of 1!, just about every Home Business Opportunity, or how Wk can make it longkr (damn those scientists for discovering people can dkciphir silgthly gorbled werds... now every spammer's doing it). But the conversational tone of this guy struck me as nice...and it almost fooled my spam filter.

The spammiest word in the entire message? Letter, whose presence my filter says indicates a 96% chance of being spam. Isn't that sad? Apparently the whole notion of letter-writing has vanished from my contacts' e-mail vocabulary... Other particularly spammy words: discovery, respect, and verification. Now what does that say about how academic my e-mail is?

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