I’ve noticed something a little odd in the spam I’ve been getting lately. The message begins “Hello! I’m bored tonight. I am nice girl that would like to chat…”. So far so, uh, bad — nothing unusual in that. The odd thing is that with virtually all of these messages, the name of the sender (yes, I know it’s not their real name) is a male name!

I can just imagine some confused guy coming back from his counseling session where he’s wrestled once again with his gender issues (and lost once again), firing up his spam blasting software with the female avatar he’s chosen to represent him, and pouring his real life frustrations into an attempt to scam people to get money to pay his shrink.

Is it possible that spammers have tested and discovered that they get a better response rate by sending using male names, or are they just not paying attention?