Simpsons Spam

Spammers are always riding the latest trend in an effort to make a quick buck. Topics from crucial to trivial are fair game.

Sometimes this means actively promoting products directly related to the phenomena. Other times it can just mean referring to the latest fad in an effort to convince people to open a message.

The year before last the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina was even used in conjunction with scam / spam email.

While such topics may appear regularly in unsolicited messages, the authors of mail filters hesitate to block them as they can also occur in messages from friends or coworkers.

Now spammers are trying to fool users into opting in to yet more spam by implying they can get free passes to the new Simpson movie. The inclusion of this content has little to do with what they're actually promoting, it's just an effort to prevent the user from manually deleting the message as soon as they get it.

Of course, the spam as always claims the user opted to receive it. I've managed to locate such a message in SpamButcher's junk mail filters. Amusingly, the sender lists an IP address they claim I used to "opt-in" with. I did a little research and the IP they claim I used isn't with any ISP I've ever used, and is on the opposite coast of the country.

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