Mmmm...fried spam

June 24, 2003 12:42 PM

So you’ve just received a junk email encouraging you to visit a website for some irresistible pornography or to consolidate your debts! Well, it’s time to oblige the people who fill your mailbox with spam. Let FriedSPAM visit their sites for you -- about a million times! After all, you are only doing what the spammers are asking you to do. (via Pop Culture Junk Mail)
posted by gottabefunky (27 comments total)

i am sorry to admit that i am currently brainstroming methods of using this tool for evil instead of good.
posted by fishfucker at 12:45 PM on June 24, 2003

Pop Culture What Mail?

Oh wait. That's me.
posted by GaelFC at 12:46 PM on June 24, 2003

i blame sen. thurmond for my typo.
posted by fishfucker at 12:47 PM on June 24, 2003

Roll your own /. effect? Smartmob server swarming?
posted by shoepal at 12:47 PM on June 24, 2003

Is there any kind of verification system (not that I see so far)? I mean, couldn't someone add metafilter.com er sumthin'?
posted by Witty at 12:48 PM on June 24, 2003

Reminds me of the concept of stuffing the business-reply envelopes with all of your snail-mail spam. Cute, but who has the time?
posted by TurkishGolds at 12:50 PM on June 24, 2003

If it can crash a spammer's server as fast as it crashes Mozilla 1.3, I will be impressed.
posted by Galvatron at 12:50 PM on June 24, 2003

Word to that, Galvatron. I went on and tried it with IE, and so far it's been stuck "validating" the URL for a couple minutes.
posted by badstone at 12:54 PM on June 24, 2003

Yeah, in mozilla 1.4RC2, it crashes instantly. Odd.
posted by mathowie at 12:55 PM on June 24, 2003

A couple issues:

DDOS attacks are illegal and probably against your TOS of service with your DSL/Cable company.

Spamming is pretty sophisticated. The URL you punch in will probably validate your email address thus leading to more spam.

Lastly, if you don't crash their server or then it just looks like spamming is a very effective way to get page hits.
posted by skallas at 12:59 PM on June 24, 2003

yep, kills Gecko/20030128 Phoenix/0.5 fast.
posted by tomplus2 at 12:59 PM on June 24, 2003

Sorry, FriedSPAM is optimised for Microsoft Internet Explorer. Please re-visit this website using Internet Explorer. Since over 97% of people use Microsoft Internet Explorer to surf the web, most websites are now optimised to work with that browser. Download Internet Explorer

Oh poop.
posted by elwoodwiles at 1:04 PM on June 24, 2003

FWIW, I reported the Mozilla bug.
posted by LukeyBoy at 1:06 PM on June 24, 2003

I love Pop Culture Junk Mail. Gael once replied to my email about the performance-enhancing properties of mixing Lucky Charms cereal with Mr. T. cereal before taking exams in college (It gives you the luck of the Irish and the wisdom of Mr. T.) Yippee!
posted by trigfunctions at 1:08 PM on June 24, 2003

Don't knock spam. I found my penis enlargement, mail order bride and a vast amount of pornography through it.
posted by ciderwoman at 1:08 PM on June 24, 2003

it's hard to tell from the site, but FriedSpam isn't DDOS, it's actually an automated page that a) reloads a particular site many times and b) cleans up the crap the site loads up (pop up windows etc). All HTTP requests come from your machine.

The basic idea is that one person running Fried Spam is a minor pin prick to the server, but a thousand (as in 1% of the recipients of your typical spam mail) might do some harm.

That said. it is a type of ddos, since they encourage you to send mail (unsolicited, I presume) to your friends linking FriedSpam attacks inline, but this is hardly the thousands of zombies scenario...
posted by daver at 1:12 PM on June 24, 2003

I love PCGM too, and considering the capabilities of the Evil Spammasters, I have a bit of advice for you, Gael...
DON'T OPEN YOUR EMAIL BOX!!!!!
posted by wendell at 1:17 PM on June 24, 2003

I see peolpe driving up their hit counts.
posted by KnitWit at 1:17 PM on June 24, 2003

*anxiously awaits his next spam*
I use spamcop.net so the amount of spam I get is very minimal.
posted by Nauip at 1:37 PM on June 24, 2003

97% use IE? I always knew I was in a small, superior minority, but that's just lame.
posted by divrsional at 1:49 PM on June 24, 2003

skallas, you're right, the spammers can track you with the URLs that they give out. But if you just remove the tracking information from the URL, you should be fine.

For instance, in a spam that I just got, this is the URL:
http://kingkong.clickformail.com:8080/track?m=2596021&l=0&.e=5y3LjbNjrSzz9UzC

So if I wanted to go to that site without it tracking me, I'd just go to
http://kingkong.clickformail.com:8080/

Also make sure your email client is set not to view pictures in emails -- those can be used to track you too.
posted by zixyer at 1:56 PM on June 24, 2003

aside from the fact that it doesn't work on anyone's browser, and has a Metafilter failure rate of 100% so far, it's an interesting idea. Getting it to actually work would be an even better idea.
posted by Outlawyr at 2:29 PM on June 24, 2003

I always knew I was in a small, superior minority

Would you like a cookie, or are my baking skills too inherently inferior?
posted by Dark Messiah at 3:27 PM on June 24, 2003

Nauip, me too.

What I've noticed is that my spam load drops a lot (though not to zero) if I regularly report it through spamcop, being reasonably careful not to bother addresses that aren't related. When I stop reporting it, my spam load gradually climbs again, until I get frustrated again and start sending it to spamcop again.
posted by hattifattener at 5:12 PM on June 24, 2003

The biggest problem I see with this is that, in order to get to the URL, you have to open the message, which often contains code that will send a validation back to the spammer, tagging your address as a valid one and shifting you to the A1 list, so opening yourself up to even more spam. Now, if someone could come up with a way to make this work without having to open the e-mail...

I am not sure whether to be offended or complimented that I am part of the top 3% of 'net users, but I cannot understand why the site can't be made to work in any standards-compliant browser. Surely anything that works in Mozilla-based browsers will work just as well in IE?
posted by dg at 6:48 PM on June 24, 2003

in order to get to the URL, you have to open the message, which often contains code that will send a validation back to the spammer

If you're already using Mozilla, hit File->Work Offline and then use the browser to open up all the HTML attachments you want. Remote access is disabled, so you're safe.
posted by Galvatron at 7:06 PM on June 24, 2003

Call it what you want, but when your telecom/cable company pulls your account because of abuse they probably won't listen to the finer point of how 1,000,000 HTTP requests in an hour isn't a DOS attempt

Secondly, this site isn't "optimized" for IE, its an Microsoft only site that runs Active X. Man, just admit you don't support IE. Don't tell people to download IE just for your little site. Not to mention, most technophobes probably aren't running IE with ActiveX set to "run anything from anyone!"

In other news my car is optimized to use roads, not waterways.

This is just a piss-poor project. Not only are you asking to get into trouble with your ISP, but the only way to actually get this thing to work without getting more spam in the process is to download your mail without opening it, search the HTML email for the proper URL, strip any identifying information from the URL, and then tell a thousand of your friends to join the DDOS. Then you might cause a temporary outtage at some site somewhere on the net. Big deal.

Or you could just submit your email to groups like spamcop if you really want to help.
posted by skallas at 7:10 PM on June 24, 2003