It used to be you only got spam on your computer. It was annoying and could be dangerous to the health and well-being of your computer and potentially, your life savings. These days, where there is any type of communications, there are spammers and scammers waiting for a chance to steal everything you’ve got and laugh all the way to their bank.

We have two telephones. One of them — a cable phone — is never answered by a human and goes directly to an answering machine. It’s part of our wi-fi package and costs $9/month — and is worth less. Pretty much all the calls on it are spam or scams. Lately, most of the calls on it are auto-dialed by a scammer offering to help us pay down our tax debt. I keep the phone because every once in a blue moon, we need two phones.

We don’t have a tax debt. We have never had a tax debt unless you count the time between discovering we owe money and my writing a check to the state or IRS and mailing it. I’m baffled how we got on the “tax debt” fixers list.

Who are these people who load up our computers and telephones with spam and scams? I get a at least 200 spams daily. On a big day, it can go as high as five or six hundred in an afternoon. Some — but not as many as you might expect — are the usual slimy porn stuff. Others? I’m not sure what they are trying to do, but I’m sure it’s nothing with which I want to be involved.

The messages fall into about five categories:

1) You’re a fabulous blogger and I’ll keep coming back forever
2) You’re a terrible blogger and you’ve wasted my valuable time
3) There’s something wrong with your browser and it’s running over its boundaries
4) I commented once and now I get bundles of comments from your blog
5) Disgusting pornography, come and get it.

I love the compliments even though they are unrelated to the “post” at which they are supposedly targeted. Examples follow:

You’re so interesting! I don’t think I’ve read anything like that before. So nice to discover someone with some original thoughts on this subject. Seriously.. thank you for starting this up. This web site is one thing that’s needed on the web, someone with a little originality!

The post photographs of antique airplanes at the Tuskegee museum.

I blog quite often and I really thank you for your information. This article has really peaked my interest. I will bookmark your blog and keep checking for new details about once per week. I subscribed to your RSS feed as well.

The post is two pictures of a cardinal and a chipper sparrow at a feeder.

This is a topic which is near to my heart… Many thanks! Exactly where are your contact details though?

Black and white photographs of an archaeological site.

Everything is very open with a precise description of the challenges. It was really informative. Your site is very helpful. Many thanks for sharing!

Pictures (by Garry) of Boston Harbor. No text except for a two sentence intro.

I was able to find good advice from your articles.

A single photograph of my granddaughter’s 15th birthday party. NO text..

And of course, there’s one very long one that’s full of disgusting (and misspelled) porn. Oh, one of my favorites is when they ask me how to find my contact information. Hint: In the section marked “Contacts.”

I love the compliments even though they are the identical to the compliments from every other spammer and scammer. It is all one group? Do they copy from each other? Is there actually ONLY one super-hyper-scammer who personally targets me for no special reason?

When I started this post, I had 0 (that is a zero) items in spam. Now there are 14 and by the time I post these, there will probably be half a dozen more. Does anyone actually respond to these bots? Do they do this to make money or just to be really annoying? I’m really not expecting an answer, but maybe someone actually has an answer?

P.S. Now there are 24 spams in my list.

Categories: Anecdote, hacking, Hacking, Humor, Technology

Tags: #Humor, #Scams, anecdotes, Computer humor, Marilyn Armstrong