Pages Tagged “Spam”
Tech Tips
- Facebook Page Flagged for… domain_placeholder.com? Probably not! (Obsolete) Facebook sent out a suspension notice with placeholder names by mistake.
- How Thunderbird’s Scam Detection Works (2005) (Obsolete) Tracking down what causes Mozilla Thunderbird to label a message as suspicious, as well as how to train it to ignore emails that you know are legit.
- Lessons from a Spam Attack: Moderation, Alerts, and Beware Auto-Sharing After cleaning up a spam flood, I learned to be a lot more careful with auto-sharing, more thorough with moderation, and turn some notifications back on.
Blog Posts
- SubdoMailing
Interesting spam/phish technique: Look for subdomains with CNAMEs or SPF records that point to abandoned domains that you can then register…and effectively take control of the subdomain or SPF. They haven’t seen any cases where it’s been used to host a phishing site at, say, an msn.com subdomain, but they’ve seen thousands of cases where […]
- Tired of Eventbrite Spam
Eventbrite has worked well for buying tickets to events I’ve attended… But over the last few months I keep getting spam for events that are not only not remotely interesting, they aren’t anywhere NEAR me. Sorry, but I’m not hopping on a plane for a pub crawl on the other side of the continent or […]
- Get ’em while they’re hot!
The spammers who’ve made it as far as the junk mail folder have oddly consistent messaging lately: 🤔
- Welcome to the Future!
We don’t have jet packs or flying cars, but we do have spam advertising remote-controlled robot birds that we can buy to entertain our cats.
- Still getting guest-post spam
I’m not opposed to relevant guest posts on a topic-based blog, but when it’s obvious that they didn’t even look at the site and are just robo-spamming blogs that maybe matched a keyword or somethingâ¦? I mean, stuff like this: “I read your article https://speedforce.org/2017/11/crisis-earth-x-conclusion-review/. Your readers might be interested in checking out our resources […]
- Recursive Email Scam
I received a scam email claiming to be from the IMF, all about who to contact if you fell for an advance fee fraud scam claiming to be from the IMF. All you have to do to get your money back is send your info and $150 to Barrister so-and-so to set up an account, […]
- Copy-Paste Comment Spam Returns
I woke up to ten or so first-time comments* in the moderation queue at Speed Force this morning. As I started reading them I was briefly confused: they were well-written, specific comments about comic books….that had nothing to do with the posts they were attached to. Complaining about Bendis’ writing on an interview with Paul […]
- Spamfighting vs. Privacy
As a former email admin, I found this history of spamfighting from a former Gmailer fascinating. The implications of widespread encryption are sobering.
- Autogenerate THIS!
A new comment spam starts out telling me how great my articles are…and then says I should auto-generate them instead.
- This Email Is Not Spam
Whenever you see “This email is not spam,” think of Obi-Wan Kenobi saying, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”
- Legitimate Spam Reports
Return Path says the majority of spam complaints relate to legitimate emails. There are two issues here: A lot of people don’t make a distinction between “email I don’t want anymore” and “email I didn’t want in the first place,” even though the appropriate responses are different. (One deserves an unsubscribe. The other deserves reporting, […]
- If you wish, charts and diagrams will be provided to show you precisely how wonderful your blog is to me
So Iâve been getting generic comment spams on Speed Force today, the kind that look like someone took a bunch of compliments and a thesaurus and stuck them in a salad shooter.  I started reading.  I started reading this one aloud: Thank you a lot for providing individuals with remarkably pleasant chance to discover important secrets from […]
- Is This Thing On?
A series of spam subjects in my junk folder, sorted alphabetically. I canât help but read them as someone repeatedly trying to get my attention, getting more frantic and frustrated as time goes by. how are you doing? how are you getting on? How Are You Getting Along? How are you, HOW ARE YOU. How […]
- More Generic Blog Spam
If you see any of these comments show up on your blog, chances are good that it’s a spammer, not someone who actually wants to contribute to the conversation.
- Generic Blogspam
If you see any – or all – of these comments on your site, itââ¬â¢s a safe bet that the commenter isnââ¬â¢t interested in having a conversation.
- Netflix Drunk-Dialing
Spam comment on Qwikster: ‘I keep getting these creepy late-night phone calls from the CEO of Netflix saying that no one else is ever going to love me like he does.’
- It came from the spam trap!
Opened up a spam trap I’d forgotten about and found ~40 copies of some — well, I hesitate to call it a newsletter, but it was a long collection of headlines, summaries, and links to news items and dubious reference sites that looked like someone had taken a few dozen conspiracy theories, put them into […]
- SPAM SPAM SPAM CAR AND SPAM
I saw a license plate today that read, “I (heart) SPAM.” I was a little surprised, but then I saw the “Made in Hawaii” plate holder. *whew!*
- “Bad Link” Webmaster Spam
Link swap spam disguised as a “helpful” note to the website admin. Funny how that broken link you have an alternative for isn’t actually on the page.
- Please step away from the thesaurus
I’ve been seeing a lot of those “I just found your blog by searching and it’s the best thing since sliced bread” comment spams lately, some even slipping through Akismet. But this one was just hilarious in its unreadability: Virtuous what I used to be in search of and quite thoroughgoing as floor. Many thanks […]
- Spambots In Disguise!
I spotted a run of comment spam using the names and reconstructed email addresses of regular commenters.
- Scraped!
There’s a splog copying K-Squared Ramblings…clumsily. As in they’ve copied the same 15 posts from the RSS feed 9 times. So far.
- Undead Spam!
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!
- Dilemma: Spam or Not?
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 […]
- Honest Comment Spammer
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 […]
- Hello, New Friend!
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 […]
- Call Your Mark a Sucker
Scam explains that you haven’t received your money because you’re dealing with scammers, so please send your info…
- Spam template
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. Iâll {surely|certainly} be looking in on […]
- Silly Spam: Random!
I actually burst out laughing when I saw a spam consisting of the phrase “some random words here” repeated 300 times.
- A Lot of Effort to Disguise Some Spam
Someone copied a comment on a site with a similar topic to one of my blogs, but somehow managed not to match it to an appropriate post.
- Essay Spam
Spam for essay-writing services really bugs me. Maybe I’m just used to pill/porn/etc spam, but I think it’s that they encourage dishonesty.
- Misdirected
Got a compliment on good tech support ð … but it was intended for another company with a similar name. ð I alternate between finding it amusing & annoying that I get spam for local businesses in Brazil. It’s a bit of a drive from SoCal. It’s sad to get Christmas cards for someone who […]
- Cylon Spammers
I’m seeing a lot of word salad spam comments this weekend. It’s entertaining to read them in the vocal style of a Cylon hybrid.
- Wednesday Bits and Bytes
I’m trying to remember when the BOFH attitude prevalent on antispam mailing lists didn’t bother me. It’s weird how suddenly reporting spam turns into a bad thing because someone (else) might make money with that knowledge.
- Making Sense of Macho Watch Spam
How does a watch make you macho? Especially if other spam seems to have a very different idea of what makes someone macho? Wait a minute…
- Teh Internets Wait
This seriously (srsly?) needs to be a lolcat caption. Spam subject of the day here! “Teh internets wait”
- What the Heck is a “Pilule?”
Spammers have been using misspellings, synonyms and malapropisms for years now. Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of Viagra/Cialis/etc. spam using the word “pilule” instead of “pill.” At first they’d just find misspellings for the drug name, but I guess some filters are blocking or scoring on “pill,” so they’ve substituted words for that…including the […]
- Status, Android C&D and Marketing
Spam subject: “Your decent watch will upgrade your status.” You mean I won’t need my phone to update Facebook? AWESOME! WTF? Google C&Ds Android modder Cyanogen. Isn’t it supposed to be licensed open-source in the first place? The cease-and-desist order is about Google’s apps (Maps, Gmail, etc.) that are pre-installed, not about the operating system […]
- Just Another Spammy Monday
Spam subject: “TPA Report.” It should be a TPS Report, but the keys are, like, right next to each other. I guess even spammers can get a case of the Mondays.
- Spit-Take Spam
Spam subject: “I have Salvia! Join me :)” — I misread this as “saliva”…and almost did a spit-take (really!) In general, though…I don’t want more spam, but a wider variety would be nice. The funny stuff is mostly sex, drugs and watches (with occasional acaÃ).
- @LOL_Spam: Sometimes You’ve Gotta Laugh
Finding the humor in spam, 140 characters at a time.
- Watch This Spam
Spam subject: “With our watches precious minutes will go slower.” So it’s a selling point that they don’t keep time correctly?
- Launching LOL Spam
Does anyone actually start off email to friends with “Dear Friend”? All right! I always wanted one of those! “Delivery Status Notification 81% 0FF.” (spam subject) Who can resist at that discount? “Get rid of pests for good!” – if only it would work on the spammers themselves. That’s it! Time to find another surgeon! […]
- Spamming Tech Support
A real “white hat SEO” wouldn’t spam their sales pitch to a tech support contact form.
- Stalker Watch, Immortality, Fast Food Crossover
Spam subject: “Your watch will find you no matter where you are.” What if I don’t want Stalker Watch to follow me around? @BadAstronomer writes a short-short story: Beware of what you wish for… Immortality is boring. Waiting for food at Rubio’s. Employees are trying to get the lyrics straight for the latest Jack-In-the-Box commercial.
- Why, the NERV!
Spam from “Gendo Ikari” selling lava lamps. The mind boggles. Edit: I guess that orange goo in the finale wasn’t Tang after all.
- Goodbye Ed and the :-) Key
Pair of spam subjects: “Say goodbye to ED” and “A person is missing!” Well, yeah, after Ed left… Just noticed the android virtual keyboard has a key for ð when typing text messages.
- Spam of the Future
One of the spamtraps is getting spammed in Russian…from the year 3610.
- Sure it is
I love 419 scam emails that start out by saying that sure, most of the messages like this are fake, but THIS one’s real!
- Double Meanings
A pair of spam subjects that recently came across the spam traps: Looking to become a published author? Give her climax after climax Hmm, that sounds like writing advice when you take them together.
- Spam or Not? Trick Question!
I try to hit Spam or Not a couple of times a week, since it helps train the MSRBL-Images blacklist. Tonight I came up against an image that seemed oddly appropriate: I had to wonder if it was a trick question…
- Apple Sax
Apparently the key to getting a story posted on Slashdot quickly is to mention Apple and software patents in the same virtual breath. Spam subject: “Your Saxual power has gone somewhere, Dont trifle with this!” Imagining a jazz player who can’t play the sax anymore…
- Spam from Elvira
In the spamtraps, I found a message from “Elvira” telling me, “It’s awful.” Now I’m waiting for “Tom” and “Crow” to tell me, “It’s terrible.”
- Inner Dragon
Spammers are running out of euphemisms. Seriously, “Release your inner dragon”…?
- Email Confusion
Why do people email me to tell me email is down? WHY? What makes them think I’ll receive the message? Obligatory User Friendly comic (Jan 28, 1999): Just as confusing: A spammer sent me this urgent message: “We need to remove cupboard, come on!” Uh, yeah, I’ll get right on that…
- BlogExplosion Starting to Recover
It looks like the campaign to reclaim BlogExplosion is working! The efforts to bury the forum spam have brought new members into the site, and earlier this week a new administrator appeared on the forums, banning over 55 accounts used by spammers and deleting 13,000 spam posts. This morning, the banner approval I’ve been waiting […]
- Spamisch
Excerpt from weird mixed German/English comment spam: “Dear me, that evil car sensibly stung out of this suspicious slot tipps.”
- Wicked Spammers
Spam subject: Wicked in the Sack. Come on, spammers, leave Elphaba out of this!
- CentOS List Hijack
Pissed off because some a-hole with a centos.org address posted multiple copies of a racist antisemitic diatribe to the CentOS announcement list. CentOS sent an apology to lists. Said spammers forged the sender’s address to get past moderation. Look back, name doesn’t match address.
- Let your fingers do the shushing
We’ve been getting more spam phone calls than usual the last couple of days, to the point where cursing out the recorded messages is actually getting a little boring. So it was almost a relief to pick up today and hear, “Hello, this is the Yellow Pages calling to update your free listing.” To me, […]
- FIB Scamming
Lame 419 scam: How likely is the FBI Director to contact someone using a GMAIL address? Update 2023: I vastly underestimated the use of Gmail by government officials, didn’t I?
- Nofollow Targeting
Sad: I disabled nofollow on my blog because it doesn’t solve the problem. Now comment spammers are trading lists of “do follow” sites.
- Not That Kind of Burn
Must sleep. Saw spam title “Wanna burn movies?” and first reaction was revulsion against gleeful censorship, not “look, more piracy spam.”
- Picard’s Pills
Just got spam from “Patrick Stewart” for body-part enlargement. Reminded of that one SNL sketch with the cake shop.
- Stimulate your what?
We’ve been testing Barracuda’s new BRBL spam block list at work. This involves flagging but not actually blocking messages, then me looking through the logs for potential false positives. I’ve found several, including the Star Wars Fan Club (I subscribed myself just to verify that it was really sent by a server at lucas-online.info) and […]
- Still Snickering
Someone’s sending spam with the headline, “Someone sent you Snickers Candy.” It’s even sillier when you look at the throwaway senders they used.
- EV SSL Buzzword Used for Phishing
One of the great ironies of phishing is that, these days, identity theft via the web tends to work by preying on people’s fear of identity theft. It doesn’t help that most people don’t really understand the technology. The typical phishing message looks something like this: Dear so-and-so. In order for us to protect your […]
- Spam Filters Gone Wild: This Is True
Waaay back in the dark ages of the Web (somewhere between 1994 and 1997) I discovered a weekly email newsletter called “This Is True.” It collected strange-but-true news stories from around the world, summarizing each in a short paragraph with a witty one-liner at the end. I subscribed to the free edition, and later to […]
- Now I want to know how I compare!
Subject found in my spam folder today: Realistic Extra Income for the Average kelson Really? Now I just have to know what income the average Kelson makes! More or less than the average Joe? And on what percentile do I fall? ð
- Free Gas with your Spam List!
Wow… you know gas is expensive when the spammers start hawking gas cards. Our support contact address received a message touting “Finest List of Nurses Including Email Addresses – Free $50 Gas Card” I had to wonder what the heck it was, so I took a look at the message. They were trying to sell […]
- Weirdest Spam Yet
I’ve seen some pretty weird spam in my time, both as an email user and an email admin. My favorite is still the request to purchase a Dimensional Warp Generator. But this one, which showed up in the spamtraps a few days ago, has got to be pretty close. Old Witchcraft Secrets – make your […]
- Flagging (Non)-Spoofed Mail
Following up on the PayPal anti-phishing discussion of a few weeks ago, I see that PayPal is promoting a service called Iconix. You install the program on your system, and it looks at your inbox for messages that claim to be from one of its customers. It tries to verify them “using industry-standard authentication technologies […]
- Silliest. Image Spam. Ever.
I don’t think I’ve seen this one in the wild, but variations pop up on Spam Or Not from time to time. I’ve obscured the website address, though I’m sure it’s been replaced by now. Seriously, how can you look at the combination of poorly-drawn not-quite stick figures (probably done with a mouse in Microsoft […]
- Link Laundering
With bloggers squashing obviously-spammy links* as fast as they can, comment spammers have evolved. (I think they’ve reached the level of slime mold now, rather than amoebas.) They’re trying to make their sites look like blogs. And I’m seeing two main techniques, one involving Trackbacks/Pingbacks, the other involving manual person-at-a-keyboard commenting. Misusing Pingbacks and Trackbacks […]
- Stupid Scammer Tricks: Forgetting BCC
There’s something delicious about irony in spam. Yesterday, the spamtraps netted an advance fee fraud scam message that started out like this: Let me be honest with you. This information is just for you alone [emphasis added]. I would suggest that you try to fix it instead of making any trouble with it as my […]
- Now there’s an opening line!
I just spotted an advance fee fraud pitch in the spamtraps that started out with the greeting: Dear Trusting Friend. I suppose the scammer could have meant “trusted friend,” which is still odd for an introduction, but makes a little more sense. Of course, if you take “trusting” to the extreme—i.e. gullible—you’ve just described the […]
- The Spammers, The!
I recently noticed that the mail server was experiencing 4 times the typical number of SMTP connections. It didn’t seem to be under any stress, though, not as far as server load went. So I watched the log file trail, and saw a bunch of messages coming in to nonexistent users with the pattern, FirstnameLastname@alternativebrowseralliance.com. […]
- Tired of Pingback Spam
Bad Behavior and Spam Karma do a good job of fighting most of the spam that hits this site, but over the last few weeks I’ve seen a (relatively) new kind that seems to require manual intervention: pingback spam. It took a long time for spammers to really start abusing pingbacks, because of two things: […]
- Sneaky Spammer
Judging by a quartet of comments posted this evening, 3 of which slipped past Spam Karma, someone’s started outsourcing comment spam to India. (I’m serious, the IP addresses were assigned to Bharti Airtel and BSNL Internet, both ISPs based in New Delhi.) They were posted quickly, as if they’d been composed in another editor and […]
- Trackback spam is back
I’m surprised it took so long, but trackback spammers seem to have finally figured out that they can sail past the simplest check against trackback spam—does the calling page actually link to the page being trackbacked?–by temporarily adding that link. Or maybe they have for a while, and they’ve only just started getting past my […]
- Spam from the Third Age
I’ve held off on posting funny spam subject lines lately, but I just had to comment on this pair. First up: Mazrim Taim was one of those, raising an army and ravaging Saldaea before he was taken. It’s a quote from Lord of Chaos, the 6th book in Robert Jordan’s fantasy series, The Wheel of […]
- Catching up with Image Spam
Since adding the MSRBL-Images signatures to our spam filters at work, I’ve occasionally dropped in to Spam or Not to help rate their submissions. It uses the “Hot or Not” concept, but instead displays an image that’s been submitted as spam, and asks viewers to rate just how spammy it is. The results feed back […]
- The Good Old Days
I stumbled across an archived mailing list post from a few years ago where I remarked on how little spam targeted WordPress blogs at the time. How things change!
- No comment?
Project Honeypot recently started tracking comment spammers as well as email harvesting bots. Oddly enough, even though they have data going back to March 22, and even though Bad Behavior and Spam Karma have blocked an incredible number of spam comments on this site (Bad Behavior has blocked 3807 connections in the past week alone)…none […]
- Pro-whaaat?
A piece of spam came across the abuse desk the other day hawking something called “Viagra Professional.” Just as some songs aren’t suited for elevator music, some products aren’t suited for Microsoft-style naming schemes. Think about it: Outside the pharmaceutical industry, what *ahem* profession would have a use for Viagra?
- Nasty Ebay “About Me” Phish
Someone I know encountered a really sneaky eBay phish this weekend. It arrived through eBay’s official “Ask seller a question” system, and consisted of a simple request: Was his auction the same as the auction at the following About Me page? The URL was a normal eBay URL of the form http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/_____. Pasting the link […]
- Enhance your… mortgage?
I suppose it was only a matter of time before these two genres of spam collided. Today I received a spam advertising body-part enlargement products, with a link to a site called bmsMUNGEDcommercialmortgage.info (without the MUNGED). Apparently, getting a new mortgage is supposed to increase my ability to handle huge tracts of land.
- Flash Fraud
Got an interesting phish today. Subject: Error in your billing information From: Keystone Savings Bank. Hmm, Keystone, eh? ð
- Apparently, it *is* a challenge
Every once in a while, a comment spam manages to get past both Bad Behavior and Spam Karma. Oddly enough, it always seems to be on the same entry: âAbuse Contactâ is not an invitation. I guess spammers like a challenge as much as anyone else.
- Eye Gouging
Here’s another example of randomly-generated spam somehow being appropriate: This morning I received an image-based stock spam. The sender’s name was listed as “eye gouging.” Yes, spam does sometimes make you want to gouge out your eyes (or perhaps the spammer’s). May I recommend the Grammar Spork⢠(NSFW: language) for such cases?
- Back to Basics: Phish by Phone
I just spotted a rather disturbing phishing message in (of all places) our abuse contact mailbox: Subject: Fraud Prevention Measures Dear customer! Due to high fraud activity we constantly increasing security level both for online banking and card transactions. In order to update our records you are required to call MBNA Card Service number at […]
- Joke Spam
I’ve noticed a new subset of blog spam over the past few months: Jokes. Instead of just filling the comment with links to the spamvertized site, it’ll either leave the the link in the author URL field, or toss a couple links in at the end, but the bulk of the comment will actually be […]
- Freewheeling Slush!
Some funny spam subjects that have popped up in my inbox or in the server’s spam traps recently: freewheeling slush — Because slush that’s hemmed in by tradition just isn’t worth reading. Planning buying trickles — In times of drought, even the tiniest stream is a wise investment! Google Animal Gestation — I see Google […]
- New trend in 419 scams: UK Artists
In the past two weeks, a new variant of the advance fee scam has dropped into our spam traps: supposed UK-based artists needing help selling their works overseas. The classic Nigerian scam involves someone claiming to be the relative of a deceased or deposed dictator, general, etc. is trying to smuggle money out of the […]
- Look, it’s Expo-Lad!
Spam subject: this going to expolad It’s a stock spam, and what they’re trying to say is “This is going to explode.” But doesn’t “Expo-Lad” sound like a character from the Legion of Super-Heroes? Just imagine: “No one wants to come to our convention! What can we do?” “Never fear! Expo-Lad will save us!” Update: […]
- Spam Target Breakdown
It seems obvious that different email addresses get different types of spam. I recently noticed that even addresses with nearly identical exposure sometimes end up with wildly different collections. A number of our spamtrap addresses are “seeded” by hiding them on websites. Put it somewhere that no human visitor will notice, ’cause the harvesting bots […]
- The Trill of the Chase
Some recent bizarre-but-true spam subjects: Dinky $ch001girl$ of the universe Obviously trying to avoid keyword filters (not that it helped), but come on—“dinky?” When was the last time you saw that applied to a person? And what exactly is a “schoolgirl of the universe?” It sounds like a new anime series or something, with schoolgirls […]
- Blue vs. 6A
Remember how LiveJournal, TypePad, and related sites were down the other day? The official line was that “Six Apart has been the victim of a sophisticated distributed denial of service attack.” It turns out that the DDOS wasn’t aimed at 6A, LJ, or any other part of their network. It was aimed at Blue Security, […]
- Such a Dreary Place
A mortgage spam started with this line: D r ear Home O u wne u r , OK, so they’re inserting random space-letter-space sets into the text. But let’s ignore what they’re trying to say, and look at how it actually came out. “Drear” home owner? (Or rather, “ouwneur?” Are they French?) Apparently I picked […]
- This is very good title
Lately I’ve seen an interesting pattern emerge in the comment spam logs here. Along with the usual collections of links to pills, porn, and watches, there are a bunch of trackback spam attempts using innocuous websites like Google and Yahoo and the phrase “this is very good,” over and over. Title? “this is very good” […]
- Spam is like machine gun fire
After my latest round of supposed anti-fraud notices claiming to be from banks with which I don’t have any accounts, it occurred to me that phishing, 419 scams, email spam, blog spam, etc. are all scattershot approaches. They seem so obvious to those of us who are used to seeing them. It seems unthinkable that […]
- Pressing Buttons
You’ve probably heard by now that AOL and Yahoo are preparing a system by which large-volume email senders can pay to get their mail sent on to subscribers. You probably haven’t heard that it’s not just pay-to-send so much as it’s pay-to-get-accredited. Senders pay a company called Goodmail to say “we won’t send spam,” Goodmail […]
- Symantec Issues
Last week I received a message offering a 30% discount on Norton Internet Security 2006. It claimed to be from Symantec, but the email address was at digitalriver.com, and all the links—including the ones that claimed to be at symantec.com—went to bluehornet.com. Now 5 minutes of research turns up the facts that Symantec does work […]
- Nigerian Scams for Auction?
eBay must have some sort of blanket advertising deal with Google, because the “sponsored links” you get for some searches really don’t make any sense. Case in point: I did a Google search for the phrase, “nigerian scam,” and saw the following ad: Wow, when they say, “Whatever it is, you can get it here.”—they […]
- Confidential? Perhaps not…
I found a 419 scam in the spamtraps that started, in typical fashion, with an all-caps name and address, then the line: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL REQUESTING What made this funny (aside from the bad grammar) was the fact that the To: line contained over 1,200 addresses! Ah, this is obviously some strange use of the word […]
- âAbuse Contactâ is not an invitation
I handle the abuse contact for an ISP’s domain name. Normally this doesn’t take up much of my inbox. Even the “Your users are spamming” messages (in response to forged senders) have dropped off. Since last night, though, the abuse and tech support contacts that filter into my inbox have collected 42 44 spams advertising […]
- Email advice: Pick a domain and stick with it!
Here’s a piece of friendly advice from a mail server admin to companies that interact with subscribers and customers via email: Pick one domain name for your business. Just one. Don’t use any other domains in your emails, even if you want to keep order confirmations separate from promotions. If you contract out for some […]
- Low-Tech Phish
I found a flood of crude phishing attempts in our postmaster account this morning. How crude? The hook was, “Simply reply to this email with your online login and password.” No forms, no imitation websites, no swiped logos, no links of any sort at all. One of them even had multiple recipients visible on the […]
- Online Organleggers
Here’s the WTF?!?!?!!!! moment of the day. Actual spam received over the weekend: Sell Your Organs Online! Reply to this message if your interested in selling your organs! Seriously, what the hell? Forget the fact that selling organs is illegal in the US. And I’m sure mailing them across state lines would be a felony. […]
- Relief Spam Dilemma
This is incredibly bizarre. Today I’ve started getting spam which is clearly coming from zombies and using fake return addresses and forged headers, but the content is a plaintext message encouraging hurricane relief donations and linking to the legitimate Red Cross and FEMA websites. There’s one further link, to arc.convio.net, but the ISC reports that […]
- Poorly Targeted Advertising
If you have a website, you’ve probably seen link swap spam. People running link farms search for a keyword or phrase, then fire off a zillion emails to the contact addresses about how they’ve looked at the site, their site is clearly relevant to yours, they’ve already linked to you and they want you to […]
- This ain’t spam
Why do some spammers insist on prefacing their junk with statements like “THIS IS NOT SPAM?” Some idiot just posted a bit long letter offering to let me put my “products” on their online store. No, they didn’t send me an email about, say, the comic book collection I’m selling. No, they didn’t offer to […]
- We’ll fight for you!
Actual spam subject lines: let us fight with your creditors afraid to fight your creditors? we’re not I’m imagining two guys in a boxing ring with the viking warriors from those Capital One commercials. If only Spamusement had a submissions page!
- An offer you can’t turn down
Some amusing “word salad” variations: To update passive your e-mail address regulator from <remove> to cellist, please visit adoptive My Profile barge. I got another one with the same structure, and they’re just dropping random words into the sentence. But I kind of like the idea of a “My Profile barge.” If you would rather […]
- Is that a promise?
A mortgage spam: THIS IS OUR CLOSING TRY We have made an effort to speak to you on many occurences and now is the time to respond! … However, based on the fact that our previous attempts to speak to you have failed, this will be our last notice to gain for you the lower […]
- Unclear on the concept
I just received spam from an organization urging me to boycott Microsoft products because they send spam. The mind boggles.
- Something for everyone
Today’s spam haul included: Hot penny Stocks How amateur golfers (can think like a pro) Half the second line was cut off, and I misread it as “Hot amateur golfers!”
- Zucchini Spam!
A recipe for zucchini loaf showed up in one of the spamtraps over the weekend. It was one of the few that used to be real accounts, so I first thought it was someone’s long-lost friend who had a 4-year-old email address, but I scrolled down to the bottom and there was an unsubscribe link. […]
- Self-Promotion Tip
If you want to advertise a new social networking service (or anything else, for that matter), do not spam the tech support and abuse contacts for an ISP with your “invitation!”
- Hare Krishna Spam
I received an odd email today which consisted solely of: Call out Gouranga be happy!!! Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga …. That which brings the highest happiness!! A little Googling, and apparently gouranga is a Hare Krishna term for happiness, also used in the sense of “be happy” and is mysteriously scrawled on bridges in the UK. […]
- Therapeutic Immolation
Another subject line, this one on a pill spam: immolatel Therapeutic Mu Yes, I think many people would find it therapeutic to immolate a spammer.
- Spamanagram
Subject line (slightly expurgated) from a spam this morning: Wow MILFS can f*** like mhrotefucesrk! My first thought was, “like what?” Then I realized it was an anagram. Not unlike the naked sushi spammers, just taken a bit further to the point where it took a few seconds to realize it wasn’t just gibberish. And […]
- Follow that link!
Making the rounds this week: IO Error’s critique of “nofollow”, the link add-on that was supposed to stop comment spam, but hasn’t even slowed it down. He suggests that it was never intended to: it was simply a sneaky way to lower blogs’ rankings in search engines. Now, I don’t have a problem with the […]
- What do you want?
I just can’t figure out what this message is supposed to be. My first thought was that someone was replying to spam that used a forged sender, but it scored 11 points in SpamAssassin for forged headers (it claimed to be from Yahoo, but wasn’t), a date stamp from the future, and Bayesian analysis. From: […]
- So sincere, it’s touching
An actual quote from a mortgage spam: Sincerely, Random Name
- Undisguised Email Tracking
It’s well-known that some spammers will find a way to track which email address has responded to/complained about their “messages.” Sometimes they’ll assign an ID code to each address, and sometimes they’ll just disguise it using something like ROT13. This code is then placed in the unsubscribe and purchase links, or embedded image references. (Legitimate […]
- Link Swap Spam
In the past few weeks I’ve started getting emails asking to exchange links with various websites. They don’t seem to be using templates, since each email has been different, but what they do have in common is that they have nothing to do with anything on my own site. They’ve clearly just let some program […]
- Darth Vader, 419 Scammer
I had set this spam sample aside without really looking at it back at the end of March. As I checked the folder this morning, the scammer’s supposed name jumped out at me. VADER DARTH CO-OPERATIVE BANK PLC UNIVERSITY BRANCH, GROVE HOUSE OXFORD ROAD MANCHESTER UK I AM WRITING TO LET YOU KNOW HOW I […]
- Philosophers and Prehensile Breasts
Two disparate types of spam, united in that the supposed sender just does not make sense. First there was a Nigerian scam purporting to be from David Hume. Then there was the blog comment spam (alas, deleted en masse just as I read the name) apparently left by “Jessica Albas Breasts.” I mentioned this to […]
- Man or Machine?
In the old days, we used to accept email sent to any local account. This meant that various system accounts would collect outside mail instead of bouncing it. No one was reading, say, rpm@example.com, or apache@example.com, but the mailboxes were there. Enter the dictionary attacks. An awful lot of those standard accounts are three-letter names—rpm, […]
- Dumb spammers
Found a couple of comments this morning that consisted of the usual generic phrases: Please check some relevant pages dedicated to… You may find it interesting to check the sites about… The weird thing: No links. No author name, no author URL, no links in the comment itself. Nothing that would clue in content filters […]
- A Lotto’ Overkill
6 related subject lines in my inbox today, all sent to my work address. CONGRATULATIONS YOU HAVE WON CONGRATILATION YOU ARE A WINNER !!! CONGRATILATION YOU ARE A WINNER !!! WINNING NOTIFICATION: Congratulations CONGRATILATION YOU ARE A WINNER !!! CONGRATILATION YOU ARE A WINNER !!! Amazing how one can win six lotteries in the same […]
- MT-Blacklist Author Joe-Jobbed
As a WordPress user I haven’t had much first-hand experience with MT-Blacklist (a system for combatting comment spam on Movable Type, though the data has been adapted for use on other toolkits), but it was enough to be suspicious when I found this in my inbox:
- Double fill-in
I remember reading a post a while back where someone looked at one of those “personals” spams—the ones that claim some sexy girl has seen your profile and wants to *ahem* “meet” you, and the variations that claim the rendezvous has already been arranged. Whoever it was noticed that one message used four or five […]
- Opting Out?
Going through the spam traps today, I noticed one message which was sent to 5 addresses on our system. Those addresses broke down as: 1 actual person’s email address. 1 long-dead account used to collect spam. 3 dedicated spamtrap addresses seeded solely by unsubscribing from spam sent to other accouts. Is it any wonder that […]
- Spam for the food bank
When we got back from vacation, I had nearly 2 MB of spam waiting. That’s after all the spam filtered out by blacklists, SpamAssassin, etc. I should’ve left it in Hawaii. They like it there. (Actually, they like SPAM—I seriously doubt they like spam any more than the rest of us.)
- Gaming search engines with WordPress
It’s always something. Apparently WordPress.org has been dabbling in black-hat SEO, hosting thousands of keyword-based articles on their high–page-ranked site and placing hidden links to them on their home page. Way to go, guys. This makes the paranoia over remote images almost look reasonable. What’s next, putting ads in the next default template? The free/open […]
- Fully Random Spam
The blog spammers must be getting desperate. The only other explanation I can think of is courtesy (keeping offensive language out of the posts), and I just can’t ascribe that motive to them. The latest attack on this site consists of randomly-generated alphanumeric strings. Name? ah87fdfbqpo3q9483fhc. Email? ahsdhufs@q98hf4i4whfcia487f.com. URL? augfagfwi7832hr732rh8732fcfiuh.example.com. (I assume they have a […]
- The Microsoft Prize
One of those “international lottery” scams (very closely related to the Nigerian scam): CONGRATULATIONS !!! YOUR E-MAIL HAS WON A MICROSOFT PRIZE My e-mail has won a prize? Not me? Hmm, I can think of lots of Microsoft “prizes” my email has received: Mydoom, Netsky, Bagle…. Of course, it’s declined all of them!
- Time Travel Spam Returns
Back in 2002, people all over the net started getting email from a “time traveller” looking for a dimensional warp generator. Most people assumed it was a joke, and some decided to play along by setting up fake stores or even arranging a drop-off. The “time travel spammer” was eventually identified as spammer Robert Todino, […]
- More spammer threats
Here’s another good one: This-message-is-not-spam. If you file a spam complaint you will be deemed liable for all costs related to the spam complaint. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the words “This is not spam” in a message that wasn’t spam, or at least talking about spam. It’s kind of like “Please do not […]
- Getting to “know” spam
There’s just something twisted about porn spam that uses Biblical quotes to distract filters.
- Another honest spammer
Found this in our mail server logs: relay=OWNED.HACKED.BITE.ME [IP removed], reject=550 5.7.1 No mail accepted from known spam hosts or exploited systems This was a connection we rejected because the sending IP was on the Spamhaus XBL list of exploited systems. (Everything from reject on is the error message we returned.) Apparently whoever wrote the […]
- Physical proof of spam?
The disclaimers spammers add to their missives are sometimes bizarre, ranging from excuses to nonsensical “word salad” to, in this example found in today’s spamtrap haul, legal threats. WARNING: ANYONE REPORTING ALLEGED SPAM TO ANY PERSON OR PERSONS, WITH OUT PHYSICAL PROOF OF SUCH A CLAIM IS GUILTY OF BOTH FRAUD & A CIVIL CRIME […]
- Honeypot Paydirt!
Whew! After 6 weeks, Project Honeypot has identified a spam harvester trolling one of the sites I signed up with them. Considering it only took 3 days for them to hit some of the local spamtraps I set up at the same time, I’m surprised. I’m especially surprised that it was found on the least […]
- Mage Guild
This one threw me for a second until I realized I was only seeing the plain-text part: Before you can purchase magical spells at the Mage Guild, you will have to find Orations by Poggio in the monastery of St. Gall A.D. 1416. Once I noticed the message had HTML and a GIF image, I […]
- On to step 8
Hmm, CNET reports that spammers are starting to route zombies’ mail through the ISP’s servers. (Hmm, that sounds familiar.) I don’t know about the “email meltdown” Linford warns against, but it will require a change in tactics. And so the escalation continues…
- Spam claims a life
Remember Charles Booher, the spam victim who was arrested for making death threats to the sender? (Early reports were that the person on the other end of the phone was an innocent third-party, but that turns out to have been a smoke screen.) Aunty Spam reports sad news: apparently Booher committed suicide last month, just […]
- Covering all the bases
I mentioned I set up some new spam traps a few weeks ago. This amusing disclaimer appeared in one of them over the weekend: You have received this message for one of the following reasons: 1) By accident. 2) Someone else is using your email address without your knowledge. 3) You have responded to one […]
- Into the twisted mind of a link spammer
The Register has published an interview with a link spammer. Link spamming is more like vandalism than junk mail, but the spammers still fall back on the old “It could be argued that a website owner is actually inviting content to their site when they allow comments” BS. Do we need to put up a […]
- Blocking spam by source
A brief history: Spammers send mail directly to victims. Server admins block by source, victims complain and try to get spammers kicked off their networks. Spammers relay through third-party servers to disguise their origin. Server admins shut close relays, and block mail from open relays. Spammers relay through trojaned zombies straight to victims. Network admins […]
- Quantum Spam Identified
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 […]
- Spam Kings Continued
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 […]
- Fast work
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 […]
- A CS Carol
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 […]
- Spam and Piracy
Shocking proof of a connection between spammers and pirates! Get your e-script at no charrge. first ten picks of the day in the marrrrrket
- Mailer-Daemon’s Aunt Edna
Here’s a gem from today’s postmaster mail: Mailer-daemon, You’ve received a postcard! You have just received a virtual postcard from Aunt Edna! Uh huh. I know some software projects have enough history to have family trees, but this seems just a bit too unlikely!
- Spamming for God (multicultural edition)
Various outlets have reported on the recent appearance of evangelical spam—unsolicited bulk email which promotes religious messages instead of advertising products. It’s been pointed out that since CAN-SPAM refers to commercial mail it can’t be used to stop people who bombard you with other types of messages. I’ve seen 419 scams with religious trappings for […]
- Spyware and Spoofing and Spam, Oh My!
CAN-SPAM one year later: more spam than ever. Spam has more than doubled from 15 billion messages in 2003 to an estimated 35 billion in 2004. Is anyone really surprised? From the article: “The FTC says the goal of the act was never to cut down on spam but to give recipients control via the […]
- Quantum Spam?
OK, chalk this one up in the “What the heck?” column: The limitation of the Photon Hypothesis According to the electromagnetic theory of light, its energy is related to the amplitude of the electric field of the electromagnetic wave, W=eE^2(where E is the amplitude). It apparently has nothing to do with the light’s circular frequency […]
- Distributed Blog Spam
Yesterday morning, I remarked to Katie that it seemed odd that with the vast number of “zombie” computers infected with remote control programs via viruses, trojans, spyware, etc., their primary use so far has been sending spam. After 7-odd years of distributed computing projects ranging from demonstrating weaknesses in encryption schemes to searching for extra-terrestrial […]
- Points for honesty?
This showed up in the spamtraps today: Subject: Truth of the matter Dear Sir, This letter can only define Nigeria Scam, a.k.a. 419. If this mail look like scam to you delete it, we are looking for serious minded person. As we all know, top officials do loot funds out of the country with non-residence […]
- What, hard work and sacrifice?
Found in a spamtrap today: “Remove your bills the Christian way” WTF? What follows is a long, disjointed collection of unrelated sentences that I suspect is actually Bayes poison (some spammers have figured out that using natural-sounding language is more effective at making Bayesian filters, well, less effective). There is, however, apparently an image above […]
- Love is in the spam!
Rob Cockerham of Cockeyed.com (home of the fascinating How Much is Inside? series) noticed the same model showing up in a lot of his spam (often wearing the same dress). He collected the advertisements, and linked them together in what he calls An Unsolicited Commercial Love Story. Since he first wrote it up, other people […]
- Interesting Acronym
From a recent abuse report: Hello. The spammer below is either using your resources to send out BULK, unsolicited, S.P.A.M. or is deceptively trying to make it look as if from your server as the ISP. I’ve seen similar wording before, mainly on reports via SpamCop, but this really made me wonder. I know what […]
- Warspamming
Via Email Battles: First ‘warspamming’ case reaches court. Basically the guy (allegedly) drove around LA with a laptop looking for insecure wireless networks, then connected to them and sent spam using people’s home accounts. The term comes from wardriving — driving around looking for unsecured networks — and warchalking — marking walls or sidewalks to […]
- Foreign Asse(t)s
Not five minutes ago I received my first 419 scam in a language other than English. What’s strange is that even though it uses normal case and I can’t read more than a few words of French, it’s still obvious what it is. It has the same general structure with the opening, the “Excuse me […]
- Government computers hijacked for spam.
Via The War on Spam and The Spam Weblog: Hackers hijack federal computers. Apparently the DOJ discovered, during their crackdown on cybercrime, that hundreds of Department of Defense and Senate computers had been turned into zombies. Nice. Can we really be sure they were only used to send spam? After all, zombies are generally the […]
- The Problem With Challenge-Response
Some people think it’s a great idea to block spam by having their email system automatically reply to any unfamiliar address, forcing the sender to jump through hoops that spammers presumably won’t bother with. About half an hour ago, the IEEE Communications Society sent out a call for papers on its mailing list. So far […]
- Targeted Marketing?
I just got an email that starts out, “We are the leading manufacturer and exporter in China.” OK, good for you, but what does this have to do with my personal website in California? It all just adds to the noise…
- Giving virus writers honest work
By way of Justin Mason and the SpamAssassin mailing list comes this post about writing add-ons for Outlook. Seth Goodman writes of Outlook’s contact list: This feature was apparently added for the convenience of virus writers, who it appears were one of the key groups that set the design requirements for this product Ronald F. […]
- Butterfly wings
Last week I started looking at ways to cut down on false positives in our spam filters. I’ve only seen two in my own mailbox this year, but of course everyone gets different kinds of email. I’ve been trolling the server logs for low-scoring “spam,” looking for anything that looks like it might be legit, […]
- Ethnic Spam Stew
I don’t usually post in this category, but the latest Nigerian clone to hit my inbox was worth it. It claimed to be from a British barrister, acting on behalf of a recently deceased French national, attempting to relocate funds from Saudi Arabia. The contact information was an email address as “Barrister Lindsay Smith” was […]
- SpamAssassin Logo Contest
Just saw a link for the current entries in the SpamAssassin Logo Contest. Entries range from a simple updating of the current logo through ninjas of varying danger and cuteness levels, and a few that have actually dropped the ninja motif altogether. Oddly, a few of them remind me of the Peacekeeper insignia from Farscape. […]
- Road Rage on the Information Superhighway
I’ve seen my share of angry complaints about spam with forged sender addresses, but this is amazing: Aunty Spam’s Slam a Spammer Blog is reporting that Sunnyvale resident Charles Booher called up the “sender” of some spam and threatened him with torture and death. Of course, (a) death threats are criminal, and (b) the callee […]
- It’s All True!
Here are several humor articles that have been posted to the SpamAssassin discussion list over the past week: The TechWeb Spin: All spam is true! (Fredric Paul, Internet Week, June 29, 2004): Yes, you read it here: it’s all true! The author explains about all the money he’s gotten from deposed Nigerian dictators, the software […]
- What do you want to do tonight?
An actual spam subject: “naarf Windows 2003 Server Enterprise” Perhaps Pinky and the Brain managed to take over Microsoft after all… Egad! (Poit!)
- IM Wars and the Spam Strawman
To be honest, I haven’t used any instant messaging system much since college. But every once in a while I fire up Gaim just to see if anyone I know is on AIM or ICQ. I have a Yahoo account, but I’m not sure anyone I know actually uses Yahoo Messenger, and I’ve been avoiding […]
- Interesting Combination
This morning I recieved both a bogus “Out of Office” reply from someone at Halliburton (presumably from a virus that spoofed my address as the sender) and a new 419 scam variant, this one claiming to be someone in Iraq. (I still think of them as Nigerian scams, but they’ve gone seriously international over the […]
- With near bowling ball!
It came from the spam box! (cue scream) Offscreen voice: AAAAAAAAA! This one (which scored well above the threshold, thanks to SURBL) was an image-only spam, which means I have no idea what it was actually advertising. (You have to go deep into the preferences and answer several “Yes, I know what I’m doing” questions […]
- Undead Spam!
OK, it’s time someone collected these comments from the SpamAssassin-Talk mailing list. A week ago, Matthew Cline posted “Vowel Duplication Humor” Subject: Regaain Your Yoooouth Text: Hi Reyna, Reeeeeeegaiiin your yooooouth with Humaaaaaaan Grooooowth Hoormooooooone! It’s like being spammed by ghosts. “Your dooOoooOOommmmed!! DoooOOoOOOoommed!!” Today, in a thread describing the pattern as “stuck key” spam, […]
- Spam International
I hit a new milestone today: I received my first spam in Hebrew. Most spam I get is in English (or some horrendously-misspelled imitation thereof). I’ve gotten spam in Portuguese since college. I frequently see spam in Japanese, Chinese and Russian (and possibly other Cyrillic languages, but I can’t tell them apart). I occasionally see […]
- Practicing my Spamish
Sometime around 1997 I started getting a lot of spam from Brazil. I don’t mean relayed through Brazil, everyone gets that these days, I mean spam from businesses and groups in Brazil, in Portuguese, intended for a Brazilian audience. I don’t know how they came up with my address, although I suspect an unscrupulous ISP […]
- Drowning in spam
These people are no longer amusing. I’ve been getting about 10 messages a day from them. On Friday I actually had to add a rule to the server config to detect their domain names, since half of them didn’t score high enough to get labeled as spam. (Bayes training helped, but not enough.) And some […]
- Wise words, indeed
I’m sure you’ve seen spam that includes random bits of text, maybe out of novels or legal documents or lists of sayings. They do this to confuse filters that learn based on messages people classify as spam or non-spam. The idea is that if there’s enough garbage mixed in with the spam, these filters will […]
- Unusual server request
This one was sent to ftp@(a domain name we host): Your Loan/Mortgage Application has been processed and we can finance you at a low 3% rate. Funny, I don’t remember “applies for refinancing” on our FTP server’s list of capabilities!
- Clearly, they didn’t learn spelling!
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so many misspellings of “college” in one email! Excerpts: Real Cllgeoe Girls Neeswt Tnocoelhgy for Gteting Off! Find out what these cleolge girls REALLY learend at shocol…. And my favorite bit, the label for the unsubscribe link: Hold Off This Rubbish All the obfuscation did nothing to disguise the […]
- Interesting use of technology
Yahoo has finally released its specification for its DomainKeys email authentication scheme. Included is the following patent license (emphasis added): Yahoo! will grant a royalty-free, worldwide, non-exclusive license under any Yahoo! patent claims that are essential to implement or use any Implementations so that licensees can make, use, sell, offer for sale, import, or yodel […]
- Now that’s irony
I noticed a new comment this morning on an 8-month old post about a case of comment spam. And you know what? It was cleverly disguised comment spam. It actually quoted the post, but it linked to a site (in Japanese) full of links to online casinos and similar junk. It’s gone now…
- Click where?
I just received spam advertising a book about fascism. It’s not your typical spam — it just looks like the introduction to a book, placed in email and sent — unsolicited of course — to random people around the net. It was fairly well written and not obfuscated, so it didn’t trigger much in the […]
- Taking your own advice
Time for the weird spam report: Some facts you may find usefull: Employers prefers people with college degree. People with college degree generally earn more then people with only high school education. You may improve your income and your life, with increasing your earning power from a diploma within days from a prestigious non-accredited university […]
- Well, what did you expect?
I hear one of our customers has cancelled service because he’s receiving too much spam. Last year, he asked us to disable the spam filters on mail sent to his account. I wonder if he remembers.
- What’s Really Behind Site Finder Backlash
SiteFinder was a “service” Verisign offered for a few weeks in 2003 in which DNS lookups to any non-existant domain in .com or .net responded with a pointer to an ad page. Techies revolted because it broke a lot of stuff. Verisign attempted to paint opponents of Site Finder as a minority of anti-innovation “technology […]
- Okay, that’s worth posting from work for.
Annoyances, my arse. I think the two comments linking to porn sites (which, with luck, will have been removed by the time most people see this post) qualify for a full-on pissy fit. Blog spammers should be roasted alive. Slowly.
- Telemarketer Scum
Yes, the American Teleservices Association is suing over the do-not-call list. The ATA estimates that the do-not-call list will cost as many as 2 million U.S. telemarketing jobs, wiping out almost a third of its industry. Sounds like a good start. Maybe they can get jobs that don’t involve annoying the hell out of people […]
- Paradox Spam
From the things-that-make-you-wonder department: “Teenage webcams! Adults only!”
- “Technical” problems. Riiight.
Email sent to the webmaster address. Subject: “Technical Problems.” Filed in the spam folder. As it turns out, it’s an ad for Viagra. At least the subject, if misleading, makes a strange sort of sense.
- It Really Works — Not!
I spend a lot more time dealing with spam than I used to, mainly so that all our customers won’t have to. (Most of it is spent adjusting or training the server’s spam filters.) As a result, I often look through spam that I used to just delete. One had a real gem of an […]
- The mind boggles…
From a recent spam: Increase Beast size by 2 cups Guaranteed