Why I Need Viagra

I occasionally wonder about that hated spam I get. For example, I have several e-mail accounts—one for my blog, one for E-Bay, one for fantasy football, one for work, etc. On one of these e-mail accounts, I regularly receive e-mails from strange-looking addresses, like rlette@wanadoo.fr. There is a one-word greeting like “Hello” or “Important”, and an attachment. The e-mails are always the same size, 31K. I’ve never opened the attachment because I know NEVER to open an attachment from someone you don’t know. I have been tempted, however. Curious.

All the usual pfishing scams show up in my e-mail eventually. For example, my Pen Pan account needs to be updated (I don’t have one). Somebody in Nigeria needs a helpful fellow here in the states to allow them to deposit beau coup bucks in his or her account. I won a bunch of money in an overseas lottery. The most voluminous are the endless pitches for pharmaceuticals, including the Viagra class of drugs.

There have been occasional spammers on my blog but lately I noticed a new twist. The spammers seem to be SEARCHING particular blogs to target their spam comment messages. I blogged months ago about a “surefire sleep aid.” Then last week I received a couple comments there asking me to visit a site on sleep aids. I had a similar experience with my “scrapbooking for men” blog.

So are spammers Google-searching now to find a particular blog? That way they can pitch a specific product they think I or someone else might actually be interested in? Well, I’m curious. Hence, the title of my blog. It’s an experiment. I’m pfishing for spammers. Sorry if the title teased that this might be something more salacious. I don’t do those kinds of blogs.

This may be a mistake. My wife, who proofreads all my blogs, says, “You’re asking for trouble.” Maybe. But I’m male, and my species can be stubborn and stupid at times. As Jimmy Stewart once said in a movie, “If we don't try, we don't do. And if we don't do, what are we on this Earth for?”

Guess that doesn’t make much sense here. But I’m going to do it anyway.

P.S. Word Whiz tagged me to track down the 5th sentence of my 23rd post. I really hadn’t thought I had written that many blogs. But the blog was about Peanut, my in-law’s gregarious, ball-playing mutt who loves to crash through our patio screen door head first. The particular sentence read, “No need to open the door. I just let myself in," I can imagine him saying.