Spam That Tricks Me
from the I-know-that-feeling... dept
If you get enough spam, I’m sure you know the feeling. As you sort through your mail, deleting the obvious spam, you find one that you’re not sure about and you end up opening it – and sure enough, it’s spam that tricked you. Every time you do that, you probably feel a little silly for getting tricked. I know I do. Columbia Professor Sree Sreenivasan discusses a few of the messages that tricked him and explains why he was fooled. He’s a lot more forgiving than I am, but I get fooled by more than my fair share. Meanwhile, picking up on Sreenivasan’s column is another reporter who points out that if any readers want to email him, they need to come up with a subject line that is clearly not spam. I agree. I know there have been a few borderline emails that I opened and turned out to not be spam – but I couldn’t tell from the subject lines. I’m sure there are others that I’ve ended up deleting.
Comments on “Spam That Tricks Me”
subject lines
When I email a journalist, I always make the subject line as specific as possible, e.g. “your column in the Weekly Gossip on recent Elvis sightings”.