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Seven Words You Can't Use
Posted on March 11, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.
Sometimes I think the most creative work comes from operating within constraints.
But when the constraints start to feel like censorship...well, then I'm suddenly not so enthusiastic.
Your friend and mine, Susan Fisher, wrote a piece about those pesky spam filters telling us what we can and cannot do in the latest issue of the BeTuitive newsletter:
For example, here are seven innocuous words (or phrases) you can't "say" in an email without risk of alerting the spam filter police.*
- enlarge
- win
- long distance
- free
- big bucks
- click here
- spam
And, for good measure, here are a few others: billion dollars, breakthrough, bulk, call now and closeout.
You can read the rest of her rant here.
March 11, 2005 in award winning magazine, award winning newsletter, Award winning publications, Blog Outsourcing, blog publish, Blogging Tools, bulk email marketing, business credibility, company newsletter, company newsletter sample, Company newsletters, Company publication, create a newsletter | Permalink
Comments
Most of the spam, virus, or phishing junk email I'm getting lately contains:
* quotes from literary sources, like Oscar Wilde
* "Thank you for your attention" (very common spam subject line)
* "Ref. [number]" (another very common subject line)
* "Final Warning..."
* "Please reply..."
* "Update your account information..."
* "You have been pre-approved for..."
* "Pre-approved application"
* "Rate approval"
* "Full length adult DVDs"
* "Cheap meds"
* "vicodin, percocet, valium..."
Posted by: steven streight aka vaspers the grate | Mar 11, 2005 8:59:54 PM
Excuse me if I go a bit off topic, but the play-on-words potential of this story was so great I had to retell it.
According to a The New York Times report this week,
"Spamalot" fans who signed up for a newsletter on the Broadway musical's official Web site may end up getting, well, spammed a lot."
"A security glitch--now fixed--exposed the names and postal and e-mail addresses of more than 31,000 people to savvy computer users."
As an aside, I had the great side-splitting pleasure of seeing Spamalot during its Chicago trial run. It is fantastic and actually lives up to the hype. If if you share my twisted "I'M NOT DEAD YET!" sense of humor, you'll love it.
Of course, I did sign up at the show's Web site to get any tidbits of news from the show's promoters. If I do end up getting spammed as a result, so be it. Then again, my spam filter probably wouldn't let much in other than a message from my favorite Nigerian in exile asking me to simply cash a check. :)
See
http://news.com.com/What+to+expect+of+Spamalot+A+lot+of+spam/2100-1029_3-5612792.html
Posted by: Susan Fisher | Mar 14, 2005 2:27:18 PM
Add "casino"
Posted by: LasPelis | Jan 16, 2009 12:10:02 PM
I can use all words.
Posted by: hot celebrities | Dec 7, 2009 4:44:17 AM
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