Category: Spam

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Some suspicious pingbacks this morning tipped me off that there’s a splog (spam blog) automatically copying posts from K-Squared Ramblings to their own site. I sent them a complaint this morning, but they don’t seem to care much: They’ve scraped the RSS feed again, and reposted the same 15 articles nine times today!

It seems extremely likely that they’ll repost this article as well. If you’re reading this on “Attorney Legal Blog” (great irony there), the site is ripping off content from other websites — and clumsily, too!

For the record, the site doing the copying, which I won’t link to directly, is “www – dot – legal – dash – attorney – dot – info”. And it looks like a lot of other sites are being copied…just as badly, repeats and all.

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Wow. Email addresses really do stay on spam lists forever. The postmaster account just picked up a non-delivery report for a message sent to a server that’s been offline for 7 years!

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I hate receiving an email ad from a company that I recognize when I can’t remember for certain whether I signed up for email or not. Did they just reactivate an old list that I’d forgotten, or have they been acting shady, picking up email addresses but not permission?

If it’s an old, forgotten list that I really did sign up for, I should just unsubscribe and have done with it. Reporting them as spam would be irresponsible and would actually make spam filters less reliable.

On the other hand, if they harvested or bought my email address, I should report it as spam…and I shouldn’t trust the unsubscribe link.

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While cleanning out the comment spam folder on Speed Force, I found this gem:

Hi this is a attempt to get noticed on the world wide web and hopefully spread the word about our services. It would be kind of you if you allow me to share my online marketing one the site. The company name is [REDACTED]. Thanks

I suppose you’ve got to give them points for honesty.

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Whenever I see spam that starts out with a subject or greeting like “Hey, friend,” I think of Fluffmodeus from the webcomic Something Positive:

TV Tropes describes the grotesque cute character as being “like an ’80s cartoon character who Care-Bear-Stared a little too long into the abyss…” Rippy declared him to be “the most annoying thing that’s ever existed.” Hmm, maybe he’s a spammer when he’s not haunting Kharisma? 😀

Oh, and the archives…definitely not work-safe.

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My jaw just dropped at this advance fee fraud scam that showed up in the spamtraps this week. The whole thing is about how the reason you haven’t gotten your funds is because you’ve been dealing with fraudsters who have been impersonating Nigerian diplomats, police, etc., and how could you possibly be so naive?…oh, and if you’ll send me your personal information and bank details, I’ll make sure the real police clear things up so you can get your payment.

Seriously. Does this technique actually work?

Actual text of the email below the cut:

Continue reading →

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I love seeing it when spam software doesn’t quite work. Sometimes it’s just schadenfreude, and sometimes it’s interesting to see how the templates are structured.

Here’s one that showed up in a comment spam on Speed Force:

{Hi|Hello|Hey there|Thanks}, {very|really|truly|genuinely} {cool|nice|good|interesting} {post|article|stuff}. Such {insighful|entertaining} writing is rare these days. I’ll {surely|certainly} be looking in on {this|your} {blog|site} again {soon|in the nea

It’s cut off because they managed to plug it in as the commenter name instead of the comment itself (oops!)

I haven’t decided whether to call this “flattery spam,” or “kiss-ass spam,” but my general reaction when I see these (and I’ve seen a lot of them) is, “Nice try.”