I'm not sending Christmas cards this year. I'm sending spam! Isn't that better than a one-size-fits-all Christmas letter or a family photo in which we all wear matching sweaters including the cats and dog! I awoke this morning to find three pages of returned mail in my inbox of people whose mail programs rejected the spam hijacked in my name for Viagra sales. Plenty more people got the email.
One of the first things I do each day is check my email, cheerfully hoping for a few personal emails in my inbox. I got some personal emails, all right, from people telling me that I’d been the victim of a spammer who had hijacked my address book to contact EVERYONE on it with a link to Viagra sales.
I checked the returned mail, and the faux address on each link was different. Many sounded harmless, such as “How to remove pet stains,” which is exactly the sort of link I would send. Others were a bit racier, including the word jerk or similar, and these weren’t recipes for jerk chicken. No matter what the link said, apparently they were all for Viagra sales.
On the bright side, I heard from people I hadn’t heard from in years, which was delightful. I emailed as many people as I could to warn them not to open the link. I realized that there were many people in my address book I didn’t even realize were there, such as people who were on other people’s mailing lists who emailed me. There were city councilmen, customer service addresses, people I freelanced for (now I look super duper professional sending out that spam crap, eh?)
Anyway, I hope I didn’t do any damage. I’m grateful for everyone’s understanding, and I’m even fortunate to have touched base with some old friends! Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Happy New Year.
Catherine Sherman 
Ah, don’t feel bad. It happens to the best of us. Obviously you changed your passwords, right?
In this day and age a contact would have to pretty dim to think that you actually wanted them to take Viagra.
I did change my password. My friends, like you dear soul, know that I would never think you need to purchase Viagra, but I wish people I work with professionally wouldn’t have to wonder? Hmmm.
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Honestly, I had to privately email a mutual friend recently to make sure a dear friend wasn’t sharing sex info with me. Really? Especially at 6 in the morning. Honestly it’s irritating! Sad but true, even Google can’t protect us lately!
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I used to work at a tech firm that did websites for a certain industry. The clients tended to be older and not very tech savvy. They would REALLY be offended by these emails and they always wanted someone to blame. They never seemed to buy our explanations that it wasn’t us and there wasn’t anything we could do about it. It was very frustrating for them to see spam that was signed by “The Team” and included the name of their own business. And this was like eight years ago! Never underestimate the human desire to make money for doing absolutely nothing of value.
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I’m constantly amazed at the amount of email I receive from people in Nigeria (that scam is SO yesterday!) and links to racier websites. I’ve learned never to open any email without a subject. I figure if someone needed Viagra they’d be getting some pronto. I don’t know why marketers think they can sneak it in under our radar. “Oh, gee, I forgot I needed to order Viagra! What luck that they’ve contacted me to expedite the process!”
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Are you so totally irritated at this crap? I am so sad at how much time we spend trying to clean up technological garbage! :>)
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