Spam Twattery

Tons of spam ends up on my machine, despite the fact that we have Spam Assassin running on the server and I have spam filtering running in Thunderbird. This one I've had a few times over the past fortnight, presented exactly as it comes to me...

r.sayid@mirror.co.ukTHIEF THIEF WARNING THE OFFICE OF FAIR TRADING IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE DTI AND TRADING STANDARDS has given the following OFFICIAL WARNING ABOUT THIEVING CARPHONE WAREHOUSE BOSS SIR CHARLES DUNSTONE ,FORGET HIS NICE IMAGE AND LITTLE MOBLY YOUR IMAGE OF HIM IS MANUFACTURED –WHERE DUNSTONE REALLY MAKES HIS PROFIT IS IN STEALING MONEY FROM YOU AND MILLIONS LIKE YOU ---IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE RECEIVED A LETTER IN THE POST CLAIMING THAT YOU HAVE WON A PRIZE OR A TELEPHONE CALL TELLING YOU HAVE WON A PRIZE AND ASKING YOU TO CALL A PREMIUM RATE TELEPHONE NUMBER AT A COST OF £9 THEN YOU HAVE BEEN CONNED BY CHARLES DUNSTONE WHOSE FRAUD GANGS HAVE SENT OUT 50 MILLION LETTERS IN THE POST CLAIMING TO BE GIVING PRIZES AND ALLSO MADE 10 MILLION PHONE CALLS SAYING THAT YOU HAVE WON A PRIZE AND TRYING TO CON YOU INTO RINGING THE NUMBER AT A COST OF £9 –WELL WE CAN TELL YOU THAT IT IS A MASSIVE FRAUD ,OVER 2 MILLION PEOPLE HAVE FALLEN FOWL OF THE LETTERS BELIEVING THE LIES CONTAINED ONLY TO PAY THE £9 AND THEN DISCOVER THAT THE PRIZES DO NOT EXIST YES CARPHONE WAREHOUSE ARE STEALING FROM YOU ,YES YOU ,ANYWAY WHY YOU ARE ASKING DOSE THE AURTHORITIES NOT SHUT IT DOWN LIKE THEY HAVE SHUT DOWN DOZENS OF OTHER GANGS ,WELL WE HAVE DISCOVERED THAT ICSTIS THE GOVERNMENT TELECOM REGULATOR ARE BEING PAID UP TO £25,000 PER WEEK IN CASH NOT TO SHUT DUNSTONES FRAUD LINES ,AND DUNSTONE IS COLLECTING £5 MILLION PER WEEK FROM YOU FOR PRIZES THAT DO NOT EXIST ,,PLEASE HELP US TO STOP ELEDERLY AND VULNERABLE PEOPLE BEING ROBBED PLEASE EMAIL THE SUN WITH YOUR VIEWS OUR EMAIL ADRESS IS r.sayid@mirror.co.uk

It's laughable. It's someone with an axe to grind, who was probably sacked by Carphone Warehouse for shouting, having dreadful grammar and a complete inability to lie convincingly.

First up - who's it from? If you look at the 'From' header, it says "dti " and the 'Reply-To' header says "info@briviclaim.com". But the very first line - well, there's no seperate lines, but you know what I mean - says "r.sayid@mirror.co.uk" and this also appears at the end, except here the spammer claims to be from The Sun as opposed to The Mirror. And apparently this is an official warning, virtually all in dyslexic capitals, with such professional terms as "THIEVING CARPHONE WAREHOUSE" and "LITTLE MOBLY" (whatever that is).

Then, the sums. 50 million letters have been sent in the post. The postage alone would cost over £10 million. The population of Britain is just under 60 million, which means that 83% of all adults and children in the UK have received these letters. Looking at the 2001 Census, the UK has under 22 million households, meaning that sending 50 million letters would be more than double the amount required to get a letter into every home. Over 2 million people have fallen "fowl" and have paid £9 for the claim phone call, which makes £18 million - but Sir Charles Dunstone is apparently collecting £5 million a week personally. Take the £10 million off for the postage on those letters, and that's £8 million. And there's other people to pay for the infrastructure of such carefully planned fraud, and tax, of course, and the £25k a week bung to ICSTIS... It doesn't really add up, does it?

Lastly, basic facts. ICSTIS isn't the government's telecom regulator. The first 'I' in ICSTIS stands for 'independent', because it's an industry body and not a government department. Something like this doesn't fall under the remit of the Office of Fair Trading or Department of Trade and Industry either.

What do we know for definite? Well, the email comes from Briviclaim, whose server is at 209.203.198.12 - a server belonging to a company in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A look at CoolWhois.com matches this IP address and provides an address of 2 Sheraton Street, London W1F 8BH - which bizarrely is included as a footer in the spam. A look over at Companies House shows there's nobody trading as Briviclaim, so it's a single person or made-up name. With a bit more digging, the address given is for this office rental location in Soho where a number of web design companies are based. A bit more of a look and we find that apparently, Briviclaim are an email advertising company... but not a successful one, as their inclusion on these blacklists would suggest...

Anyway. That was a nice waste of my lunch hour =)