While catching up with a friend online, I was asked if I’d received a few pictures he’d emailed me. They were sent to my old university email address, which I check very infrequently. While glancing through the pages of spam which collects in there, which is nearly 0 SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio), I noticed that some of the subject lines were in french. I looked through a couple of the messages out of curiosity:

Nouveau Site !
Venez découvrir notre nouvelle boutique en ligne.

Cliquez ici

and another:

Cher Client Desjardins,

Nous avons récement détécté une ou plusieurs tentatives de connection a votre compte AccèsD

Desjardins, provenant d’une 

adresse IP suspecte et nous avons des raisons de croire qu il y a eu des tentativens de

piratage qui aurait pu divulguer 

votre mot de passe.

Thanks for that. I now know a few new words:

• provenir de – to come from; to originate from

• tentative – attempt

• divulguer – to disclose

Fun stuff, but I’d still like to see the War on Terror efforts redirected to a War on Spammers. Then the world could truly be a better place.