My Dear!

Today, I received an e-mail address with the heading "My Dear!" The author's name was Susan Patrick, which sounded vaguely familiar but I couldn't put a face to the name.

Since it was a message from someone that I didn't know, here were my thoughts:

a) 40 percent chance that Susan wants to sell me Viagra or Ciali$
b) 40 percent chance that Susan wants to enact a business deal with me, and all she needs is my banking information
c) 20 percent chance that there is a real Susan Patrick out there, somewhere.

Unfortunately, the answer was "b", but I have to give "Susan" a thumbs-up. It's not often that a spammer manages to put together the right name and title on an e-mail to get the user to open it. (I moved the mail to Yahoo!'s SpamGuard and let SpamGuard increase its knowledge.)

My Google Mail account absolutely floods with spam. Spammers everywhere try to come up with a title to an e-mail message that will get the recipient to bite:

"I didn't get your e-mail"
"Robert just died"
"Obama has heart attack"
"I need a turnaround on this memo or there's trouble"

In any case, it was a good title for the spammer. "My Dear!" It isn't often that you're called "My Dear!" It made me feel warm inside.