Spam. We all get it, but for a long time I’ve been nursing a wee suspicion that it’s a bit too well targeted. Over the years I’ve seen a number of odd “coincidences” – spam from people with names very similar to friends of mine, subject lines extremely similar to various subjects I have interests in that are very unlikely to have been selected at random.

But in the last few days I’ve noticed something else and recalled a couple of other earlier similar spams. A couple of days ago I sent a package via an international carrier and within a day I received a message purporting to be from that company trying to tell me that delivery had failed but as usual containing a disguised file that will undoubtedly have been a virus of some sort. I remembered that once before I had sent a another package via another carrier and had later received messages disguised as being from them. Yesterday I paid my phone and broadband bill and today I received a spoof message apparently from the company with a link to a fake login to fix the “failed payment”. Fortunately I’m both experienced and wary, but it would have been so very simple for someone to have clicked on something very similar to a message they were expecting.

Now I don’t believe much in coincidence, and this is all getting to be far too much not to have some sort of causative basis behind it. I increasingly suspect that somehow the spammers are being fed with or are intercepting, more detailed information on all our communications than should be possible. And that, if true is a very worrying development.I may have to dig out my old copy of PGP, but sadly not that many people use it.

Anyone else seeing this sort of pattern in their spam?  Come and join me on the grassy knoll, conspiracy theories rule

Be careful out there, and don’t forget your tinfoil hats.