You'd think that the indigestion and stomach upset that accompanies eating Spam canned luncheon meat would be an adequate souvenir of your Spam experience. But the folks at Hormel thought that their customers would like a more constant reminder by enticing them to wear Spam sweatshirts and accessories and using Spam kitchen gadgets from the Spam catalog. I'm guessing from the fried, poofy perms and mom jeans that this is late '80s, early '90s. The golden age of Spam, perhaps?
Only sexy geek John Hodgman (AKA PC) could make unsolicited emails offering you prescription drugs sound this romantic! Watch him read actual spam emails for Boing Boing TV's SPAMasterpiece Theater in his honey-toned voice and see if you don't start clicking "Report Spam" just a little bit later.
Notice an irregularly large amount of spam arriving in your Gmail inbox lately? Well Google says it has remedied the problem by fixing the bug that was letting these annoying emails make it past their spam filters.
Google still asks that you report any spam messages that are making their way to your inbox instead of your spam folders.
Have you ever wanted to reply to a spammer, not to ask him how his life came to this or did he think that this is what he would be when he grew up, but just to taunt him? A writer for the Boston Globe did just that; when a spammer emailed him, promising him 20 percent of some fake company's profits for just the exchange of his bank account numbers (what a deal!), he decided to have fun with spam.
He emailed the spammer back, playing along for a bit, and got into a pretty funny volley, with gems from the spammer like, "In my last email i ask you to provide me your credit card number and the limit. instead you asking of my own. PLEASE MAIL ME THE DETAILS SO AS TO START BUSINESS OKAY." Basically, it seems as if he drives the spammers insane. Read his story for more vicarious tech payback!
A New York spam aficionado just got 30 months in jail for spamming AOL subscribers. He must also pay the company $180,000. Too bad nobody ever got locked up for mailing all those AOL CD-ROMs.
The spammer, 27-year-old Adam Vitale, circumvented AOL's spam filter and spammed AOL's 1.2 million subscribers on behalf of a government informant. Vitale, who has also been accused of running a Craigslist prostitution ring, had made a deal with the informant to send out junk emails advertising software in exchange for 50 percent of the software's profits.
I just signed in to my ancient AOL account to do some research and found 94 emails, aka my inbox, I would classify as spam, all received in the last month (see image). So I'm thinking it can't be that hard to crack the filter. Either way, as Vitale received his spamming sentence, the federal judge told him that "spamming is serious criminal conduct." Do you agree? Was a two-and-a-half-year sentence fair?
Being a professional "spammer" is risky business, but for those of us on the receiving end, you can't help but find it humorous when sites like Spam Is Poetry use these messages as their blueprint for artistic expression.
Contemporary artist Janet Nelson has taken email from her spam folder and created an ingenious collection of Innocent Spam drawings that are inspired by spam headlines such as this one — helping to get all of our minds out of the gutter!
To learn how to post your favorite websites to our Website of the Day group, read more
Spring is food-festival season, and there's no shortage of events to attend this weekend. From shrimp to strawberries, there's food for everyone to enjoy. If something is missing from this list, let us all know about it in the comments below!
As much as spam emails totally suck when they make their way to your inbox - especially ones like these - I can honestly say I was completely shocked when I read this story on USA Today.
A man from Colorado has been arrested for sending hundreds of thousands of spam e-mails. His sentence? Twenty-one months in prison plus having to pay nearly $715,000 to the Internal Revenue Service.
I've met the odd "professional spammer" in my day, and they seriously look like your average Joe that basically gets paid for sending mass emails for various companies. . . usually without even knowing or caring about what the email is about. What's different about this case is the serial spammer was creating emails to deceive stock investors and he actually achieved this. During his spamming stint, he ended up raking in over $3.5 million. Nuf said.
I can't help but chuckle at the few spam emails that make their way through my filters and into my inbox. Buy this and grow that — oh, the temptation!
Do you ever notice how spam can be somewhat poetic at times? Well Spam Is Poetry has created an entire website that takes spam and creatively transforms it into eloquent and poetic pieces of written work. Now if only it arrived in our inboxes like this!
To learn how to post your favorite websites to our Website of the Day group, read more
While watching The Oscars last night, I saw a commercial for Spam Singles. The pre-cooked meat products from the folks at Spam are easy and convenient and come in both original Spam and 100% white, lean turkey Spam. I'll admit, I think Spam has its place, and when browned and chopped into fried rice, it can be really tasty. However I don't know if I'll end up picking up these pre-sliced singles. How about you? Would you eat Spam Slices?
