Secrets and lies

SPAMMERS APPEAR TO be taking to heart the Nazi propaganda dictum that more people will believe a big lie than a small one. The lies that spammers tell keep getting bigger, and the scariest part is that apparently some folks do indeed believe them.

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There is nothing that spammers won't lie about, from their identity to their true purposes in e-mailing you. One of the nastier spams that readers have seen recently gave the impression of being related to an IRS audit of the recipients, who were supposed to fill out a form supplying the fraudulent spammer with bank account numbers and other sensitive information. Another increasingly common spam scam is to send out bulk e-mail messages that claim the sender just received a virus-infected file attachment from you and then recommend a Web site where you can purchase antivirus software that will fix the problem. Phony order confirmations are also popular, apparently in the hope that you'll be foolish enough to dispute the bogus charge and in the process reveal your actual credit card number or other useful information.

The first lie most spammers tell is how you got on their mailing list, e.g., "You opted in to receive this information" or "Thank you for your interest in our product." Then there's the biggest lie of all, "You will receive this message only once." But some spammers are venturing beyond these tried-and-true fibs to tell some even bigger whoppers. Many spammers are now selling antispam software or services with an it-takes-one-to-stop-one-pitch: "Only through the use of this product can you ensure that you do not receive any commercial e-mails," reads one such claim for the nonexistent antispam magic bullet.

Some of the lies are so strange it makes you wonder about the spammer's sanity. One reader received assurances that he was receiving the offer to join an e-mail pyramid scheme because "we have had some sort of business transaction between each other in the past 20 years ... I may have even sold you fruit when I was in the produce business!"

A message hawking a bottle of "pheromone-based" perfume that I received (at an e-mail address that indicates the spammer was suckered into buying a very unproductive list of e-mail addresses) led off with the statement: "Notice: I have paid to be able to send you this e-mail." In case this didn't garner my sympathy, the message went on to assure me that he only wanted to share with others his new-found knowledge of how to make money online. How buying a bottle of perfume would do that was not made clear.

Spammers are also happily imitating the software industry by claiming they have the right to spam you under a hidden license agreement you supposedly accepted. More and more unsolicited commercial e-mail comes with fine print that asserts, "You are receiving this exclusive promotion as part of the terms of service agreed to when you signed up with one of our affiliated sites." Unless you do a lot of business with some very shady outfits, the claim that you agreed to their terms of service in a previous transaction is almost certainly a lie, but how could you ever prove it?

Purveyors of junk e-mail are also becoming more aggressive in their assertions of the mythical legal right to spam. This has gone beyond the citations of "S. 1618" and other spam-friendly legislation that never actually became law, to dire warnings of the supposed legal consequences of interfering with their dirty doings. One reader recently found himself on the receiving end of such threats after complaining to the ISP of a known spammer who bombarded users at the reader's company with a particularly despicable "Stop Child Molesters" message.

"This guy spammed us with requests to visit his site to look up listed sex offenders," said the reader, who noted that the spammer's site in fact requires $10 a pop to search its highly improbable database of convicted criminals. (A "free service" at the site only provides links to other sex offender databases after extracting whatever information it can from those who register.) "He didn't like that we complained ... [and began to] cite laws that don't exist and threaten legal action." Along with his spurious claims of First Amendment protection and threats to "have my lawyer file litigation" if the reader continued to complain, the spammer even made references to knowing where the reader lived.

Although that reader was more amused than anything else by the spammer's prevarications, it is remarkable what some people will swallow as truth. One piece of evidence for how gullible people can be comes from the annual report of the federal government's Internet Fraud Complaint Center. Among fraud complaints filed at www.ifccfbi.gov during 2001, the report says, the 16 victims of the "Nigerian Letter" e-mail scam (where some supposed Third World officials say they want to transfer millions of dollars into your account) suffered the highest take-per-victim of any of the Internet frauds the agency tracks.

The prize-winning big lie has to be one of the hoax spams that recently circulated about a supposed merger of Intel and AOL. "In an effort to make sure that AOL remains the most widely used program, Intel and AOL are running an e-mail beta test," the message read. "When you forward this e-mail to friends, Intel can and will track it (if you are a Microsoft Windows user) for a two-week time period. For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay you $203.15."

Sure, Microsoft is going to pay you to keep AOL number one. Yet versions of the message were circulating with long lists of folks who had forwarded it along to their friends. Of course, the only thing they might receive for their trouble is more spam. But the bigger the lie, the easier it is for some people to believe.