The work email server spam filter does not simply reject everything suspicious – this would risk us losing legitimate emails, something made worse by some companies choosing to send invoices and remittances as PDF attachments with no accompanying text whatsoever, something the mail server considers dodgy.
So (until I work out a better, foolproof automated process, or take the time to properly tweak the spam settings on the server) I manually look through some of the doubtful messages to pluck out those that are not actually spam.
The most common types of spam messages caught seem to be…
5. Your credit card is blocked (enter all your details into our dodgy web site)…
4. Work from home and earn $$$…
3. Marry a gorgeous Russian girl…
2. Cheap replica watches (Rolex etc)…
1. Cheap medicine to help gentlemen with, err, size-related personal problems.
…though it appears cheap Canadian pharmacies are also gaining in popularity, despite this being for a .com.au address.
5a – you’ve shared your WOW / Starwars / Rift account (doesn’t seem to matter if you have one or not.
“Greetings!
It has come to our attention that you are trying to sell your personal Star Wars account(s).
As you may not be aware of, this conflicts with the EULA and Terms of Agreement.
If this proves to be true, your account can and will be disabled.”
And a phishy address they want you to enter your account details into.
gmail is *very* good at picking up and blocking these. but it gets a couple of false positives.