Spammers from Everywhere
30 Mar 2005 
around lunchtime 
Matt Winckler
I hate to have to admit it, but some of the most obnoxious spam has come from other classical Christian schools under the ACCS‘ purview. There was, for instance, the one that involved a 600KB attachment that needed to be sent twice, because the first time “we realized that some recipients may be blacklisting the company we used to send the mail, and we wanted to make sure everyone got the message, so we’re sending it via a different mailserver, sorry if this is a duplicate”. Then there was the shameless “5 Proven Steps for Marketing your Classical School” or some such rubbish. But today’s spam occupies its own special niche in the annals of idiocy.
It consists of: one blank subject line, one “From” header consisting of “RSA”, one blank message body, followed by one rubber-stamp signature giving the contact information of some school secretary, accompanied by a 40KB attachment entitled “Society for Classical Learning Promo.doc”. Its contents? An exhortation to register for some conference or the other, but not containing any information whatsoever regarding cost, dates, the proper method of registration, or any leads to a contact who could fill in any of these details. The icing on the cake, of course, was the fact that all recipients were in the “Cc:” header of the email, not the “Bcc:”, so now my address has been thrown to the wolves once more.
Presumably these schools are staffed by intelligent people. Why then, when it comes to marketing, are they all acting like morons?!
I composed an entire lengthy email to the esteemed spammer explaining all of this, including the part about morons. I then summarily threw it away. I know from experience that the people who do this kind of thing wouldn’t learn anyway, and I might as well save myself the trouble of going back and forth with someone who will somehow never comprehend the idea that anyone wouldn’t want to receive helpful information via unsolicited email. I have a more faithful listener in my Bayesian junk mail filter.
*blacklist*