h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So we all know what Spam is. Unsolicited e-mail which tends to offer all kinds of things like enlargement of certain anatomical areas, credit reports, software (or rather, in a vain attempt to beat my spam filters, 'stf0wrae'), and the obvious, porn. Spam comes by e-mail.

Now, a lesser-known annoyance is known as Spim, and sent via Instant Messaging networks such as ICQ, or AIM. This will often come in the form of some bloke who is as butch as they come by day, but put him in front of a computer keyboard and he becomes 'Sandra the dirty webcam chick', giving out messages to random people which contain little more than a URL to, supposedly, a webcam. Spim is mostly porn-based. At least on ICQ. That's why I originally gave up my account.

Now, I'm not even sure if Spext exists in the Glossary of the Interweb. Or whether it should actually be 'Spxt'. I think I just made it up. This is Spam by Text (Text is a crap name for what the rest of the world calls SMS Messaging). I know 2legs has had this problem, going by his recent Journal Entry on it - But anyway, I shall retype, word for 'wrd', one of the two duplicate messages I received when I turned my phone on the other day (And I wouldn't have even done that had I not needed a calculator, which is built in to my phone. Very handy. The Messaging part is also useful to store little notes to myself. Who needs a PDA?):

From:
WINNER

Message Centre:
+111111111111

Time:
25-Apr-2004, 13:30:20

Message:
URGENT! We are trying to contact U. Todays draw shows that you have won a £800 prize GUARANTEED. Call 090 500 **** from land line. Claim A26. Valid 12hrs only

Now first off. It's 'We have been trying to contact you'. It's also bad to guarantee something you can't promise. I starred ou the last four digits of the phone number because I'm not going to give the number out (for one thing, I've given you my prize claim code. ) Landline has been amalgamated into one word in modern English, now, too. And there should have been a full-stop (period) after 'only'.

Honestly. And they wonder why nobody can write properly.

By the way, that message centre was probably forged and fake, so there's no need to . They usually have a valid phone number for the SMS centre. Forging it to a fake one covers their tracks, much in the same way as forging the headers in e-mail to 'forget' which server it was sent from (And I'm not even sure that's possible; that header is added just before the message is sent- You'd have to hack Postfix for that)