Recent examples of spam that's been sent to addresses at MIT

We place examples of spam received at MIT here for all to see. We edit the "To" lines to remove real addresses at MIT, but otherwise these are exactly as they arrive.

We never do what they say, never send them mail, never call them and never visit their websites. Basically, as readers, we ignore what they say.

But, as postmasters, we deal with spammers in whatever ways seem appropriate. We put offensive, spam-like mail here for all to see. If it reaches 'postmaster@mit.edu' and it looks like spam, it will end up here.

On a final note, just because you don't see something here doesn't mean we haven't already seen, dealt with, and filed a complaint about it. Really the best thing to so is delete it and move on.

• June 2001: Britney and Friends Various non-sequitor subjects. Yes, you and I could splice our respective faces onto some porn queen's body but it still wouldn't be Britney.
• December 2000: IT TRAINING An early Christmas gift, no doubt. Lots of famous endorsements including from the government. Don't reply with anything; you'll just be confirming their address list.
• November 2000: Important Career Center Information A new spin on a recent trend to spam MIT people offering them job advice. We suspect we know the list used by these people. We also have spoken with the company and they indicate that it is against their policy to send out such solicitations. They are following up to determine and correct the source.
• April, 2000: The Internet Spy Guide! Find Out Info About Anyone! It's been about a year since any spam passing through our mail hubs has been worthy of much comment, but Miss Postmaster feels the need to deconstruct this one for the benefit of readers who are new to the Internet. Basically, it is a cheesy pitch like the one the radio commentator Jean Shepherd fell for when he was a boy. For ten cents, you could buy a telescope that would let you see the bones in your hand! He imagined it would let him see through anything...anything! So, this spam tells you how, for $24.95 US, you can find out anything about anyone! Maybe you'll even be able the see the bones in your hand, too!
• Dec 1999: LASER PRINTER TONER Allright already, enough! Today it comes from UUnet, tomorrow it comes from Level3, the next day it'll come from alltel.net . This one keeps coming back like a bad penny. Don't waste your time calling any phone numbers here as it won't do you any good; You'll just get aggravated. For the record: the MIT postmasters have left a message at 1/16/2000 2129 EST on the listed complaint number (1-888-494-8597) requesting that all MIT.EDU addresses be removed from their distribution. We'll see... Well, we just got spammed again by these idiots. Onced again notified them to remove all MIT.EDU addresses at 2/27/2000 at 23:10 EST. Since you're wasting time reading this page, perhaps you'd like to hear the erudite individual who's voice instructs you on how to supposedly get your email address removed from their infernal spamming list. Here's the 700K .au file we transcribed on a recent call.
• Jun 1999: www.adultlogin.com Annoying html for cheesy porn site.
• April 10 1999: The Hottest Site On The Net!!(270) Hundreds of these came in to MIT addresses over a ten-minute period today, with all the characteristics of the worst spam: empty "From:" line, no "To:" line, lame "Subject" line with the classic exclamation points, a number that changes on the subject line to prevent recepients from filtering successfully, and cheesy, drooling content.
• April 1 1999: A non-funny, totally bogus "April fool's joke" about the Meilssa virus, telling the reader to "cease email transmissions". The message is a hoax, having nothing to do with MIT Information Systems. It contains an "April Fool's" message at the very end.
• Feb 1999: Screen Printing & Digital Imaging Newsletter It is hard to imagine that a legitmate business would send hundreds or thousands of pieces of unsolicited junk mail like this. It gives such a poor impression of the business. We caught this one in progress.
• Jan 1999: ONE-POUND-A-DAY DIET Spam sent to several MIT mailing lists. The side effect is if it did work according to the spammers you would need to spend a lot on new clothes.
• Jan 1999: $1,000 for sending an e-mail Total meta-spam, combining the now-classic elements of faked header lines, lots of upper-case text and exclamation points, and a make-money-quick scam that seems to involve your sending spam for someone else. Right.
• Jan 1999: SurfChina.com - Search Engine for China These appear to have been addressed directly to individual email addresses gleaned from... who knows? And don't the Chinese people have enough troubles already?
• Jan 1999: Free Service A bunch of these came in to MIT addresses with differing header lines, bogus "From" lines, and so on. Some sort of money scam which you should ignore.
• Jan 1999: New Book- "How To Juggle Women: Without Getting Killed or Going Broke" That colon in the title is a hint at the cheesy ad-speak in this piece of junkmail. The bogus header lines are annoying. One can only imagine the quality of writing in the "book" itself.
• Jan 1999: What is in it for you? What's in it for me is annoyance and the tedium of tracking down and reporting the sender to their ISP.
• Jan 1999: A New Year's Dream Well, this is a sad story, asking for money. And, of course, since it's email, the content and the headers can't easily be verified.
• Dec 1998: Put your subject line here. This seems to be an example of meta-spam, intended to attract readers who want to send their own spam. Do not respond to this mail, it is simply an attempt to gather email addresses of people who actually read their mail!
• Nov 1998: CONTROL YOUR WEIGHT!!, standard electronic junkmail, fake headers, a cheap pitch, a holiday greeting and lots of exclamation points.
• Nov 1998: What are these spammers thinking? I can't imagine anyone would even read this, much less send money to an address in the Bahamas for this ONE-POUND-A-DAY DIET (Free Recipe Included!!!) scam.
• Nov 1998: I haven't been putting many examples in during November, not because we haven't been getting hit by spam attack after spam attack, but because we've been getting such nasty examples that common sense prevents me from putting them here. This recent one is a typical "get rich" scam, boring and tedious in its text and method, barely worth noting.
• Nov 1998: Get Rich Click Another lame get rich quick scam.
• Oct 1998: An Important Decision You Must Make It's actually a simple, unimportant decision...hit "Delete" without looking. It has bogus To and From lines, but we will find the sender's ISP and complain.
• Oct 1998: Please read ! This is not Spam ! Yes it is! And, a new form, sent to hundreds of addresses at hundreds of different sites, to people who have "Anne" in their email addresses. This is too much. You see we could never filter such things out. Your postmaster is working on tracking down this sender.
• Oct 1998: Free Shopping Cart For Your Website! This is New England. People say "shopping carriage" here. This ridiculous mail is full of typos and a suspicious-looking number to call to "find out" about it.
• Oct 1998: The Winter Park Express Pass Another junkmailing that contains bogus information about how to remove your address, and which ends with a sanctimonious statement about its compliance with some "proposed" US federal requirement. But, guess what...the proposed legislation concerns "slamming", not "spamming"!
• Oct 1998: 1004-toner Not only is it junkmail, it's all in uppercase letters so it's impossible to read. I suppose that could be considered a plus. And look, it's from the Benchmark spammers way back in 1998!
• Oct 1998: UNIVERSITY DIPLOMAS (52200) Another spam wave of the now-classic fake-diploma scam. I got thirteen copies in my personal mailbox this morning. Plus all the bounced mail and all the complaints that came in to 'postmaster'. This is starting to annoy me.
• Oct 1998: Getting better all the time! I'm beginning to think an exclamation mark in the subject line is a good enough predictor of spam-ish content. I couldn't even bother to read this one.
• Oct 1998: Finally at Last! Another ad for video tapes from the folks at 208.166.10.x. The subject line is amusing in its redundant enthusiasm. But the text itself ends with a completely obnoxious paragraph about how to remove your name from their "database". This shows the cynical intention of the sender, which is simply to annoy as many people as possible. Basically, since they send the message using bogus "To:" lines, if their instructions are accurate, following the instructions will not behave the way the recipient expects. This is a sort of "double-spam", which can only be read as a deliberate nuisance.
• Oct 1998: INTERNATIONAL DRIVER'S LICENSE Cheap-looking ad for some sort of fake-sounding driver's license. These come in with different numbers in the subject line and at the end of the message, so the sender is clearly determined to evade filters and annoy the public.
• Oct 1998: Polite Request There's some freeware called "Spam Hater" which seems popular among users of a large, commercial ISP. When users run it, it sends this "polite" message to what seems like every possible address contained in a mail message. Being freeware, let's just say it's worth what they paid for it. What it sends looks exactly like spam.
• Oct 1998: Just read this! Actually, don't bother to read it. This is a long-winded, old-fashioned chain letter that actually tells the reader to send money through the mail. In the style of mail itself, "Unbelievable!!!!!!"
• Sept 1998: Buddha images Ad for a "unique" opportunity. For some reason, I can't think of "unique" and "electronic junk mail" at the same time.
• Sept 1998: Medical Equipment Not really, it's an ad for some sort of Macintosh-related hardware shop in Oregon.
• Sept 1998: INTERNET SLEUTH REPORT A breathless, long ad for a pamphlet that sounds like it consists of screen dumps from a few search sites.
• Sept 1998: US - Boersenbrief This is written in German, but it's got some inept html in it. How typical of spam.
• Sept 1998: 8.9 cent/min:... Contains a phone number and detailed instructions on how to "remove" yourself from their "database". Ignore everything they say. It's spam through and through.
• Sept 1998: Dear Valued Customer Looks like an ad for porno sites.
• Sept 1998: BOOST Your Website's Traffic An ad for cheesy-sounding internet services.
• Sept 1998: No Hassle Offshore Merchant Accounts! This looks like it has something to do with gambling on the internet.
• Sept 1998: ATTRACT WOMEN EASILY! A breathless ad for pheromones. From the same folks who sent the cheesy-sounding video spam in August.
• Aug 1998: UUNIVERSITY DIPLOMAS This one shows up at MIT over and over. Diplomas from "prestigious non-accredited universities" for "as little as $125". What a joke.
• Aug 1998: 99 Toyotas as low as... Short note including "appologies for your inconvenience". Right.
• Aug 1998: Meeting aand Charming Women Long-winded ad for some cheesy-sounding videos.

Back to the prototype UBE page.