How to Spot a Psychopath

My spam had two high points today.

One of them was not the terrible news that the invaluable link directory at teksavers.com was REMOVING MY LINK OMG from their site because I had failed to respond to their repeated unsolicited requests for a link from this ancient motherboard review to http://www.teksavers.com/, with the title "Buy Sell Refurbished Cisco".

I simply cannot figure out why I haven't done that. Too late now!

Spam high point one was brought to me by the new wave of random-subject-lined replica watch ads, which seem to be sourcing their random words from a much more awesome dictionary than most.

My favourite so far is today's masterpiece, "Rainbow Kaleidoscope Ice-cream Egg Magnet".

I opened that message, hopeful to be given the opportunity to purchase this wonderful-sounding product. But all it contained was the usual link to an odd-named and inaccessible server where, I fear, no Rainbow Kaleidoscope Ice-cream Egg Magnet would be on sale anyway.

(The next one to arrive had the subject "Solid Prison Post-office Necklace Fan", which sounds much less appealing.)

Later in the day, I received this pearler:

Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2007 19:04:47 +0200
From: "Igal K." <igalkr@013.net>
Subject: Article contribution proposal to www.dansdata.com
To: dan@dansdata.com

I've stumbled across your site - www.dansdata.com and
I want to make you an offer regarding contributing uniquely
written Insomnia & Sleep Problem related articles to your site.

As you know - Creating unique content for your site is the only
way to get high rankings in Google and other Search Engines.
Copying Articles from Article Directories became obsolete
now that Google is penalizing sites with Duplicate content.

This is where we can help each other in a win-win partnership - I
have a staff of skilled writers creating articles about subjects
such as ( Just to to name a few ) :

      Insomnia Treatment Tips
      What Are Sleep Disorders
      Chronic Insomnia Treatment
      Sleep Aid Guides
      Sleep Disorders
      Sleeping Pills Help

The articles that I'm offering will be unique and were never
published on any articles directory or website, therefore you will
have the full benefits of a unique content that is published only on
your website - in Addition you have full rights to edit and tailor those
articles to your own liking and your website needs.

The only thing I want in return are 2 links pointing back to my
Insomnia Related site at the bottom of each published article.

So if you're interested in my unique win-win proposal please let
me know so we can start helping each other get Higher Rankings
in Google.

Igal K.

You know how sometimes you click on a result for some obscure search or other, and then find yourself on a site with a buggerload of Google ads and some real actual readable text... but that text doesn't contain any valuable information at all?

In fact, the text looks as if it could be customised, with a quick search and replace, to apply to any subject?

I'm betting that this is the sort of "content" that Igal's "staff of skilled writers" are offering my poor little site, which with its miserable thousand or so articles and laser-like focus on sleep disorders is clearly in need of Igal's assistance.

(Amazingly enough, I don't think dansdata.com contains even a passing reference to insomnia at the moment. Usually, subject-specific spam like this comes to me because someone found the word "sauna" on my site somewhere and decided that I therefore must be interested in ordering a few container-loads of Chinese pre-formed hot tubs. Heaven knows how Igal came up with the insomnia connection, in the absence of such an obvious link.)

I suppose it's possible that Igal really does have writers on staff. If that's the case, I imagine they're the inexpensive and quirky kind.

Igal's a wily one, too; he doesn't mention the URL of his special insomnia site in his spam.

But I'll betcha any of you unfortunate enough to be searching for information on sleep disorders will be seeing Igal's site soon. At least until Google catches on, yet again.