Category: Spam

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A brief history:

  1. Spammers send mail directly to victims.
  2. Server admins block by source, victims complain and try to get spammers kicked off their networks.
  3. Spammers relay through third-party servers to disguise their origin.
  4. Server admins shut close relays, and block mail from open relays.
  5. Spammers relay through trojaned zombies straight to victims.
  6. Network admins block outgoing mail traffic except through their servers.
  7. Spammers relay through zombies’ ISPs’ mail servers.
  8. ????

We’re in the early stages of step 6, with broadband ISPs starting to block outgoing direct-to-MX mail traffic. The obvious response by spammers is, of course, Continue reading →

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A while back I received a strange spam containing a quantum physics paper. At the time I wasn’t sure what to make of it, although someone suggested it might just be a randomly mailed document sent by a virus.

Someone else who received it referred to it as Idea Spam—spam designed not to sell or advertise a product, but to promote an idea. Basically, spam as a meme vector.

Another person characterized the paper (or rather, the paper’s author) as a crank. Apparently it’s not unusual for pseudo-scientists to indiscriminately send their “findings” to anyone they think might listen. My favorite quote from this discussion:

i heard that one professor (i can’t remember whom) has a folder in his cabinet titled “public relations” where he stuffs things from these maniacs. when he was asked why he didn’t just label the folder “nut cases,” he replied that “then they’d get mad. this way, they will feel like i might look at it later and just go away.”

And so the mystery is solved.

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(Book cover)While reading an article suggesting Microsoft isn’t trying very hard to stop spam, I recognized the writer as the author of Spam Kings, the book I’m currently reading. It’s a fascinating and, surprisingly, entertaining read about people on both sides of the fight.

Thanks to Salon, I now know that Brian McWilliams has a Spam Kings Blog on which he’s been posting follow-ups to stories from the book, and, of course, newer stories in the seemingly neverending war on spam.

(via The Spam Weblog)

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Three days ago I created a bunch of new spamtrap addresses at work and posted them in hidden places on websites where no one would actually see them. Today, two of them received requests for help moving large sums of money out of Nigeria.

Yesterday afternoon, I signed up a couple of sites with Project Honeypot. One of them has already been spidered 6 times (though two of those were Yahoo).

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Interesting subject line from a spam that hit today:

The spirit of customer service

It was a pharmacy spam, but for some reason I immediately thought of the ghosts in A Christmas Carol.

Imagine the ghosts of customer service past, present and future visiting some CEO and convincing him that they need to provide a decent experience to their clients.