I wonder if you've noticed a shift in the type of spam you receive. I have.
The quantity hasn't changed. But I noticed a distinct shift in the topics of the messages quite a while ago.
Right about the time home foreclosures started to set new records--again--and before they even started to bring down the banks that held them, I saw a change.
Before, my spam filters were clogged with links to overseas pharmacies, offers to match me with my perfect mate, and esoteric claims to be able to "enhance" various body parts--some of which I don't even have. I still get a few of those, but far, far fewer.
Now the topics are jobs: job training, job opportunities, ways to make money in my spare time. They offer credit repair. Ways to save my home. New cars with bad credit. Free or reduced merchandise. Gift cards to stores. Ways to unload unwanted timeshares. How to repair my credit. And, perhaps saddest of all, offers to buy broken gold and silver jewelry to earn extra money.
I've no doubt these new claims are every bit as bogus as the old ones. It seems to me that craigslist would simply post job openings on their own service if they really had them. And not everybody in the whole country can get a good-paying job as a crime-scene technician.
But spammers need to keep their pulse on people's needs in order to have any hope of enticing even a few to open their junk. When times are good, folks care about their love life. They want to be happy, popular, or sexy. When times are bad, they just want to survive. To save what they have. To get a few pennies off. To scrape up whatever they can to get by.
To tell the truth, the spam made me nervous. More nervous than the news. At the time, the Bush administration was still trying to convince the world that everything was okay. This was a typical market swing and would right itself with time and the magic of the free market.
Today, we can see that was clearly a lie. Not the first we've heard from Bush and his buddies.
Of course, a lot of us suspected it was a lie. Whether it was because we were already seeing the effects in our own lives or communities, or because we have learned from harsh experience that Mr. Bush has a tendency to tell whoppers, many of us suspected the truth. Some got it at just a gut level. Others more consciously.
But the spammers knew. They were prepared and ready to take advantage of the fall they clearly saw coming.
Next time, I may listen to my spam filters instead of the Treasury Department.
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