The old favorites never die. I felt a touch of nostalgia today when I saw that in the recent wave of spam advertising naked pictures of celebrities (and leading directly to a malware download page), tennis player Anna Kournikova still gets a mention. Nine years on, and Anna is still being used to encourage people to infect their computers. And they say tradition is dead.

Also making a reappearance this week is the famous hitman scam. 'From the assassin' reads the subject line of this ominous message, which continues:

We are assassin and someone around you hired us to assassinate you do his personal reason and since past six weeks now we have been following all you movements both going out and coming in. every of your data is with us both your address infect everything thing that concerning you and don't ask how did we get your email, well last weekend we are with you to accomplish the assignment in other to get you down.

There's a weird kind of poetry to it. You could almost set it to avant-garde electronic music and get a whole performance piece out of it.

While they don't teach much English at Assassin School, you'd be wrong to think that assassins are simply brutal loners. The message goes on to refer to 'assassin community', which is a rather appealing idea. I picture all these hooded ninja types sitting around and chatting about their latest kills, or trading tips on knives and poisons.

They also evidently have a conscience. My life is (temporarily) to be spared because:

... we wanted to shoot you and something came to the hearth of the shooter and said, his should not shoot this man because you did not do any evil to the personal that hired us ... We assassin all over the world always listing to our spirit and when our spirit tells us to kill we obey the spirit by killing the person, well god is on your said and we decided to open up this matter with you.

I was puzzled by the bit about something coming to the hearth of the shooter, which sounded curiously old-fashioned, until I finally realized that they meant 'heart'. It still sounds rather old-fashioned, but it makes a little more sense.

But if I'm such a nice guy, why would anyone want me dead?

The executor has been giving us pleasure to kill you so the he will take over your position and don't ask the position because is well known to the person ok.

I know the labor market is tough these days, but the idea that anyone would want to kill me to get my job is really startling. Still, it narrows down the list of suspects.

In the end, of course, it comes down to money. I'm sorry to say that assassins aren't as honorable as they once were, and this one is prepared to sell out his employer. If I pay the assassin $45,000 my life will be spared and they will give me the tape that records their conversation with the person who wants me dead (but not their name; I have to figure that out for myself). Of course, if I don't ...

The assassin is waiting.