Dedicated to my late brave, beautiful and silly mummy, Debra Ross. I love you mumster.

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Category archive for spam

Because archives are so much easier than having just hundreds of posts on the home page. I learned that the hard way.

Sus meeting up spam


Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam…

Gmail’s spam filters have really been sliding over the last year. I never used to get any spam at all in the inbox folders, now I get half a dozen a day. Take this hilarious message I got this morning:

hayyyyy

I havent been introduced to yous but we know a person in comon who handed me your emaile since I just got to city. They informed me youd be down in hooking up with a gorgeous slap of boooty like mine haha. Neways I will not ever get on my email so don’t want to meetup i shall pass you my pics and show i’m as hot as i claim. msg me up on my Yahoo messenger.

so yes just send me a msg to Y! Messenger: NEWGWENNSN

Do not write back to this emaile since i don’t check it. google Yahoo messenger if you dont have it to download it

Later

Sorry darling, I don’t swing that way ;-). Obviously our alleged third party didn’t tell you that abbreviated txt speak pisses me off. I’m intrigued as to how you managed to spell “email” as “emaile” though, I can honestly say I’ve never seen it written like that.

Incredible SGD579 laptop deal

Check out this advertisement that I saw on a website in March! 579 Singapore Dollars is a pretty good deal!

Are they serious?

Wait a minute, it’s US Dollars. They could tell I had a Singaporean IP address so they thought they’d do some misleading advertising?

Wait a minute, it’s a Dell.

Wait a minute, it’s a Vostro! I reiterate from my Twitter post in January:

Which marketing genius came up with the name “Dell Vostro”? Sounds like a disease of the brainstem.

Never mind, I don’t want it for 579 Singapore Dollars. Or US Dollars. Or whatever the currency is. I need a cup of coffee!

Dodgy Windows virus scanner on FreeBSD!

For some reason this evening while searching for information about how to grate cheese using only rubber bands MacGyver style (or maybe while I was searching for SQlite information for Ruby, I don’t remember) a random message box popped up:

Your Windows installation could be infected with viruses!

Given I’m on FreeBSD (they didn’t even check whether their victim was running Windows?!), just for a laugh I decided to click OK and see what they showed!

Really dodgy fake Windows virus scanner

I was expecting the usual silly looking website with affiliate links for piles of overpriced and unnecessary security software, but instead a new fake web software screen appeared, complete with animated progress bars and an evolving list of "infections" that the "software" had "detected". When it was done another fake message appeared which linked to an executable file to download, presumably containing spyware or a virus. Taking a look at the source on the page itself, each button triggered the same JavaScript download function.

ASIDE: The JavaScript code took up more space than any of the HTML. I’ve never seen that before, quite eye opening. Scams like this need more 1337 programming skills than I thought. And all the more reason to disable JavaScript except for trusted sites!

I must say, despite the fact the Windows logo is different in four different places and the grammar is terrible, the animations and fake scan results are pretty well done. For most savvy and intermediate computer users the flaws would be pretty obvious and they’d probably laugh them off, but the scary thing is I’m sure there are plenty of people who would find this whole shameless charade convincing. Just like all these hoaxes, they seem to target this group; heck if they can net one person out of a few thousand, the whole exercise has been… how does Richard Quest put it… profitable.

Malware distributor, I stick my tongue out at thee!
Malware distributor, I stick my tongue out at thee!

For what it’s worth though, and on the bright side, it was really hilarious seeing this whole thing act itself out… in KDE on a FreeBSD machine where the windows look completely different, the colours don’t match, the fonts aren’t even the same and the .exe file it tried to download to the machine wouldn’t have been able to run itself even if it did make it to the hard drive to start off with!

Sorry guys, there’s no Microsoft Windows code to exploit on this machine!

Archaic existence rude metals spam


Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam…

For a long time in this weblog’s formative years I used to post some of the more funny, interesting or ridiculous spam messages I got either here, in email or from carrier pigeons shoved through my window. I figured I was getting all this material all the time, why not use it for something?

Anyway after an extended period of time where I received nothing but the usual penis enlarging advice, fake watches and bogus lotteries, I received a real gem (pun intended) in my comment moderation queue. It’s… 1703 words long!

If I posted the entire message it would easily triple the length of this page (and it’s already long enough as it is) so just to give you an idea here’s a brief snippet:

Jewelry critical adornments frayed for adorn or utility, to manifest disgusting or profusion, or to go agreat with superstitious form toll or model Its use antecurrents clothing, and it has been made of a discrepancy of materials including berries, nuts, seeds, perforated stones, feathers, tresses, teeth, bone, upons, ivory, and metals. Although bronze and y be suffering with been toughened by rude peoples and in current handwrought jewelry, gold has commonly been the preferred metal. Jewelry has been decorated by cameo, embossing, etching, and filigree, and by employment of enamel, mosaic, gems , semiloved stones, and wo bestow make an exhibit a rare planesmanship. Archaic existance the jewelry is in general al, most colorful, and displays lotus cream and scarab motifs. Beads were in use accustomed to extensively, as in coarse collars, and were again second-hand for bartegive someone a buzz. Armlets and anklets were also tattered. There was a renewal of fervor for handwrought pieces dugang the trickery resuscitation of the 1960s in the opinion States. Other information about jewerly: (URLs removed)

Obviously by padding their spam URLs with natural language, they’re attempting to bypass spam filters. Still, I didn’t know that metals were toughened by rude peoples. Is that anything like Rude… box?

If it is, I’d rather not have anything to do with it!

Is embedded spam getting worse?


Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam…

Having had websites for a while now I’ve definitely seen an evolution in spam. If you don’t believe in evolution, that’s okay: I don’t believe in gravity. After all, it’s just a theory right?

At first spam bots harvested email addresses from search engine indexes of web pages, then when the concept of posting comment on blogs started reaching critical mass spam bots started pumping spam through those… I can guarantee it won’t be long before most of the traffic on the internet will be junk spam messages, not just the majority of email.

ASIDE: The cynic in me says that most of the material on the internet is pretty much junk anyway, and the self depreciating side of me says that this website in particular is not doing much to lift these seemingly low standards!

It seems to me though that blog spam in itself is evolving though. I used the word "though" twice in that sentence. When previously they mostly consisted of masses of links to get more Google juice, now they seem to be latching on web feeds that blog software exports and creating more and more junk blogs with this plagiarised information. Some of them try to pass themselves off as legitimate by creating faux introductions that go along the lines of “Hey I found this blog entry and it’s really interesting, here’s a summary!”.

I noticed this phenomenon (I’ve never been able to say that word without ending up saying phenomenon -menon -menon… -menon) recently when I started getting hits from this somewhat creepy blog called "Blogslog Golf" that just posted a large chunk from my article about Boohoo paraphernalia:

Blog spam

I can only theorise they’re doing this to get trackback and increase their rankings on Google, or as a way to add content en masse to their site to make it appear more legitimate for advertising. It fills me with so much anger: I mean, why didn’t I think of that? :P

Accumulated holiday spam fun

It’s amazing how much work, studies and other assorted whatnot accumulates when you disconnect yourself from the internets [sic].

Case in point: silly, unauthorised, supposed erection assisting or lottery winning, mismatched, bulk emails! When I returned from my family’s trip to Sydney for mummy’s funeral, this was the screen I was welcomed with:

Screenshot of spam! Argh!

The problem is, I used to be able to just hit the Clear button with Akismet, but lately it’s been generating so many false positives I have to comb through the pages to make sure legitimate comments haven’t been filtered out by accident. Of course I usually check comments every day so combing through a few dozen is no problem, but letting it accumulate like this is a real nightmare!

So just to let people know, if you’ve posted a comment and it hasn’t been approved yet, you can understand why it might take a while.

So much spam... so little time...
So much spam… so little time…
I can’t stand dry posts with just text you see!

I used to be under the impression that spambots just posted to everything they could get their hands on, but it seems they’re drawn to certain articles. Some of them clearly don’t make sense, especially the ones which attempt to hijack articles where I’ve talked about spam!

So just for interest’s sake (hope Mr. Interest is okay with me using him in this example) here are a microscopic selection of posts which seem to attract the most spam messages, with the titles copied verbatim.

20 Years Old Tomorrow
kidney disease symptons, manta equador, in karaoke odessa show tx, the villege, hollins univeristy, on line poker 7stud lo… uncertain Edmonton magic Bendix.regime aeronautic …
Credit Spam!
patin couffin, glamis dunes, lenguaje iconico, amalia carrara, joyland amusment park, making mirror telescope, dance robot, atv honda lowest motorcycle price, train calling all angels lyric, auto design nation shield usa, ach florida payment processing, xm satellite radio rating, bank cd mutual rate washington, bank cd mutual rate washington, conferencing phone service, dj hawaii wedding, addiction recovery trauma, adipex diet effects pill side, caroline beil, people doing stupid stuff, people doing stupid stuff, 3d home architect home design deluxe, book exodus moses, battery computer laptop notebook portable, cheap cheapest computer laptop notebook, goodnites pull ups, aol jason whitlock
Review of Cranky Geeks 081
Having a good credit history is crucial for anyone desiring a credit. Your credit history is based on credit reports that are meant to provide information on the borrower’s reliability. I have good credit history and I was approved for a great credit card offer at…


Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam…

That’s one thing I guess spam will always be: entertainment delivered right to my comments pages!

Why do people add me en-masse on Twitter?

As you may already be aware I’m an obsessively obsessed person with an obsessively obsessed obsession for Twitter, the micro-blogging platform where you type what you’re doing. It’s such a stunningly simple yet horribly addictive site that I’ve posted updates to over 3500 times, and have made friends with so many people who not only have I have never met in person but are not even in the same city, country, time zone or planet as me!

ASIDE: I mentioned planet because I follow at least one person on Twitter who claims to not reside on Earth. Given the fact we have barely even begun to colonise the moon, I find myself doubting this person’s residential claims, though maybe they work in a secret underground organisaion that my friend Frank Nora says is the real problem with the world right now. Damn those elitist underground people who want to undermine society to bring about a new world order and make us robotic slaves who will carry out their mission to build the world’s largest mozzarella ball!

ASIDE: How did I end up discussing secret societies, cheese and colonising other planets on a post discussing Twitter? Is this a sign of a creative mind, or a deranged one?

All that said though, I fear that people who harvest profiles and add friends en-masse are slowly wrecking Twitter. If you’ve been on Twitter for a while you know what I’m talking about: getting a constant stream of emails informing you that John Doe is following you on Twitter along with 1000 other people, and that John Doe is being followed by only a dozen or so people.

That's a lot of messages!

That image is a screenshot of my inbox showing just messages from Twitter over the last month. Out of these, a small number are notifications from friends, and the rest are people who want to add me who are following thousands of people with only a few following them!

In so many situations online when people seem to be harvesting addresses or profiles and adding people I can understand the motivation: usually it’s either to allow the harvester to spam or scam users. I find it somewhat more difficult to see the motivation here though: what do harvesters gain by attempting to befriend me on Twitter? Unless I add them back I receive none of their messages which may or may not include spam or links to phishing sites.

Am I missing something here? I don’t understand what’s going on!

On spam and Schadenfreude

For what seems like an age I’ve been receiving email newsletters from the so-called "Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation". They added me to their email list; I didn’t subscribe to them; and they don’t provide any way to opt out. Repeated messages to them to unsubscribe me from their list were always ignored.

ASIDE: I probably paid a price for replying, which verified my address and allowed them to continue spamming me. The power of hindsight!

Fortunately they finally slipped up and provided a link to a YouTube video they’re working on. From their latest email message that landed in my spam folder:

Dear Friends,

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation has a polished draft of our new “Tax Competition” video. Thanks to all the helpful comments we received on our “Corporate Tax Rate” video, I hope our new video is an even better product. It’s one minute shorter and was used a professional filming facility, but we’ve also worked on making the message more compelling.

I’m hoping you can be part of our final filter.

This was a slip up because YouTube allows publicly viewable comments that they can’t filter out. So I posted a quick response which I’m sure won’t get me off their spam list, but at least I can warn others… and plus it just feels good finally getting a message to them they can’t just block out!

A chronic spammer slips up!

These people subscribed me to their email newsletters without my permission and do not provide a way to opt out. I have to create a separate filter in all my email clients specially for their junk.

Even ignoring their flawed economic logic, the simple fact of the matter is they’re nothing but SPAMMERS. Don’t give them any of your time.

I’m not linking to their site or their video so I’m not giving them free Google juice, but I’m sure you could find them by doing a quick internet search… if you really wanted to find them!

Does this count as Schadenfreude? Is there such as thing as justified Schadenfreude? :-D

RichardDawkins.net