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Part of the joy of having been online since 1998 (at a time when FFL and Safe Lists worked) is you are so blasted with spam you usually get to be one of the first people to see new types of spam emerge, oh the privilege!  So just when you thought all the dirt bag tricks had been tried with email spamming, just when image spam starts to be filtered and decline we find a new way for dirt bags to spam us.

What is this new method you ask, take your stupid penis patch or viagra or total crap investing advice and roll it up into a PDF, then come up with a catchy email sender name, catchy subject line and catchy file name and email your spam list with a PDF attachment.  Now as far as I know PDFs are not scanned for content by any existing email programs and to make it more difficult PDF Spam is apparently being mixed with Image Spam to make it even more difficult to stop.  Here is what I mean, this is a sample of one such POS email I was sent, excuse the black boxes but I won't let these vermin have the pleasure of showing my readers their BS stock symbol or name.

Note that this PDF was not text but image based, so what has happened is as Image Spam delivery rates declined the spammers just took their image spams and turned them into PDF spam.  Nice huh?  Now I don't know how effective this will be, PDF's must be opened and so far the use of email subjects and sender addresses has been pathetic.  In addition so has the use of file names!

For instance this file was named, Cancelled.WADICEQJ.pdf and the subject was, Cancelled.WADICEQJ.pdf attached so the only reason I opened it was I wanted an example for this post.  One thing is clear though it will be hard to filter and with some brain power applied to the sender name, subject line and file name it will get more effective at being read.  

And now as Paul Harvery would say, "here is the rest of the story".  I just love a good conspiracy especially when it is at least plausible so don't go trying to convince me that Neil Armstrong drank beer and hung out with strippers while we were led to believe he was walking on the moon but here is a possible "conspiracy" that is plausible. 

Given that this method is not really ever going to be that effective who would stand the most to benefit from a new type of spamming?  Spammers would get better results from old fashioned spam then this method as it sits now, I just can't see it lasting long term as a tool by real spammers that actually do influence stocks and sell penis patches with some level of success to those who can still be sold to with blatant spam.  Nope this one does not really have the hallmarks of a true spammer on it to me!

So who do I think is behind this?  A software company or software programmer!  My instinct is that the "magical scanning software" to combat this "new problem" already exists.  The plan is to get spammers using it, encourage them to do so and make this a "new issue in work place productivity" to sell the solution to a truly non problem.

All you do is buy a few million emails in spam lists from the spam brokers and spam away.  You go into spammer forums and talk about how great the delivery is (yes spammers have spammer forums) and get lots of spammers trying it out.  In time you genearate a ton of buzz about his massive new problem and then swoop in with a massive PR campaign around having the solution.   Then you try selling your solution to the consumer or if you are small time you sell you solution to a bigger company.

Think I am nuts?  Try this run a Google search for PDF spam, then search Google blog search and google news search for it.  What you will find with each is massive amounts of buzz about this new scourge on humanity.  How it is causing tons of problems and making life hard, how there are "massive campaigns" being run by PDF spammers.  Now as the process runs its' course and all the Romanians, Indians and Russians try out this new full proof method of spamming the "problem will grow" and the market should get better and better for a solution.

See here is the thing, I actually think most spam is being sent to create a market for email filtering programs this is just the latest one!  Do you really think anyone is buying a Penis Patch because a spammer tell them, "your wifes says your weenie is teenie"?  Seriously there are real spammers who spam millions of people a day but some of the stuff you get you just look at and go, "what".

Could it be much of the spam we see is nothing but "legitimate companies" making their market bigger?  I believe so and I certainly believe that is the case with PDF spam.  So anyway I am off to put on my tin foil (um I mean black) hat and do some honorable evil marketing.

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: pdf spam, image spam, email marketing, spam, spam email, penis patch, viagra, black hat, filtering software, spam filtering, spam prevention, spam software

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