I’m normally pretty good at mentally blanking out the spam subject lines as they come into MailWasher. I know that 99% of the email that I see will either be spam or bounces from spoofed spam and virus mails, as all the mail my filters can positively identify as expected is hidden from view. But for the last two weeks or so, one particular subject line has been catching my attention and sending me into a brief panic several times a day. ‘Delivery Failure’.

Of course, any mails with this subject line are either bounces from spoofed mail that used my address, or just some random spammer trying his luck. However, for the last two weeks I have equated this to:

Dear Customer. Thank you for your order. We attempted delivery on 12 December 2004, but unsuccessful due to . We will attempt to redeliver on 13 December 2006. Alternatively, you may arrange to collect the item from your nearest depot. The nearest depot is . Your business is important to us, however I do hope this parcel was not important to you as your chances of ever taking delivery are now so slim as to not really be worth consideration. Jim says thanks. He’d always wanted one of those.

And they say that Christmas shopping online is stress-free?