Well, almost. Following up to Rojaks’ outcry of price increase in spamming, I think I know why the price had increased almost 30 times! Over the last couple of years, the Spammers Inc. had spent “millions” of dollars into human psychology research, discovering how Internet users act towards their spam mails, as well as CTR (Click-trough-rate) and conversion rate of their mails. After millions of trial-and-error experiments, we’re seeing their end product today - right in your “Junk Mail” folder!

This particular mail really caught my attention.

MICRO LOTTERY INTERNATIONAL
WAGENAAR 10,2297 LL,DEN HAAG
NETHERLANDS
(Customer Services)
Ref: HO/9420X/68
Batch: 074/05/ZY369
02-11-2005

WINNING NOTIFICATION:

We
happily announce to you the draw (#953) of the MICRO LOTTERY,onlin
Sweepstakes International program held on 1st nov 2005
Your e-mail
address attached to ticket number:5647560054 with Serial number
5368/02 drew the lucky numbers: 50-18-22-24-32-33(bonus no.), which
subsequently won you the lottery in the 2nd category i.ematch 5 plus
bonus.

You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of EU500,
000 (five hundred thousand euros) in cash credited to file
KTU/902318308/03. This is from a total cash prize of EU2,000,000
shared amongst the first four (4) lucky winners in this category i.e
Match 5 plus bonus. All participants for the online version were
selected randomly from
World Wide Web sites through computer draw
system and extracted from over 100,000 unions, associations, and
corporate bodies that are listed online. This promotion takes place
weekly.

bla bla bla bla bla….

To file for your claim,
please contact our fiduciary agent:

Mr. Paul Royer
microlotto@tangana.
com
TELE 00-31-649218251

Goodluck from me and members of staff of the
MICRO LOTTERY INTERNATIONAL

Yours faithfully,

Richard K. Lloyd
Online coordinator for MICRO LOTTERY
Sweepstakes International Program.

Don’t play play okay? I almost got a heart-attack when I read this shit. Fact is, I had my honeymoon last June in Den Haag of the Netherlands! Somemore, I also DID buy a lottery there! Man, it’s as real as it gets. I’ve lost the ticket and then you guys tell me I’ve won?

But hor, look at that message, if it’s really from a lottery company, usually they’re big corporates, do you think they’ll make typo mistakes like, onlin (highlighted) instead of online? And then, the message displays characteristics of a spam mail, notice the paragraphing? unusual breaks in paragraphs, especially the .com (highlighted) in the e-mail address at the footer. They do that to escape being caught by spam mail bots. But this lucky shit managed to bypass the bot and eventually got into my Inbox! Well, maybe Yahoo! Mail’s spambot doesn’t wanna take the risk of me suing them for losing a lottery winning notification.

In the end, I think it’s a conincident more than anything else. That’s how spam mail works right? By coincidence, by chance. Spammers send out thousands of spam mails everyday with different topics that might relate to your recent activities, say, an online payment by PayPal, bought an online lottery, entered some lucky draws, etc. Then, you would think that the spam mail is actually legit and conforms to your expectations, and thus, resulting in a click/lead/conversion, but that ends there. The worst is to get your PC infected with virus/trojans.

So, be smart about spam mails like these and don’t get yourself fooled.