But back in 1996, users of the proto-Web community Usenet got spammed with messages that reached an almost transcendent level of bizarre—a weirdness so precise it implied the influence of a very human intelligence. “Markovian Parallax Denigrate,” read the title of each post, followed by a mountain of seemingly meaningless word spew:
Unraveling the Internet’s oldest and weirdest mystery
posted by the man of twists and turns
on Nov 20, 2012 -
68 comments
For the past 18 months, engineers at PayPal, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft and
nine other technology companies have spent their off-hours (and some on-hours) working hand in hand to tackle the problem that plagues them all: e-mail
phishing. The result is
DMARC, or, "Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance". It's not new, but puts
SPF and
DKIM to work in a new
way.
posted by Blake
on Jan 31, 2012 -
45 comments
Spam: This Time It's Personal.
Andy Markley was really looking forward to a work-free Labor Day weekend far away from his computer. But he made the mistake of checking his inbox before he left for his planned holiday.
posted by lola
on Sep 30, 2003 -
32 comments
Perhaps you've seen the new MSN commercials that use M$'s "spam-blocking" technology to support their ISP service. Maybe you've read fluff pieces like
these, where AOL and Microsoft execs are allowed to wax poetic about their deep anti-spam convictions:
"'I get spam too, and I am as fed up with it as all of our members are,' AOL chief executive Jonathan F. Miller said yesterday."
"'To help keep intruders at bay,' Microsoft said, "we must all do our part.'"
So what's
this all about?
"'AOL and Microsoft argue there is a place for legitimate unsolicited e-mail in the marketplace,' said Marc Berejka, Microsoft's senior director of public policy."
posted by Pinwheel
on May 9, 2003 -
19 comments
Fighting back: Spammers want e-mail addresses. Give them e-mail addresses. Tons of e-mail addresses. This handy PHP script will add as many fake e-mail addresses to your web site as you want. 20 is the default, with command and space delimited, just like this:
lebsda@fihnekyjvbj.de, tzckk@zcwgituizwjgy.eu, lzteth@gvxmzqphddvhsd.de, wspvnmpitk@adlruenmiupuglcqn.nl, toulr@cttzrgrb.it, gxgb@yqkeermxyxxozvfws.dk, ucldeo@lwytvqqq.nl, brddshal@qmyhquiqtbaeggpx.com, ovu@zzxlbismicnqsuiubkfl.de, txxewr@ogpzcomgrhkd.br, goluv@twcnkfeghsh.com, tfexbuous@heev.ar, zjgeaztzvm@rvonhfrd.de, nhsgikjvjb@stncbqtnyyclaflm.jp, svgfdh@zeynvdd.nl, hxqios@yrdlshpyscndoslt.de, fxglj@sfkdxgyadbqk.ca, mtskzv@carbd.de, pigm@vnkcalneewdulz.com, nqnjwldpfk@ecifc.edu
And each call to the web site will give the spam harvester 20 spanking new addresses. (Web site is german, but the script is in english)
posted by vowe
on Aug 26, 2002 -
59 comments
Verizon v. Ralsky and Additional Benefits LCC Verizon is suing Alan Ralsky in Federal court for sending enough spam -- more than 56 gigabytes -- to "virtually paralyze" their e-mail servers on at least two occaisions. The trial begins Sept. 23. Ralsky's response: "These (anti-spammers) feel we've infringed on their personal space. They want to own the Internet." Ralsky and his lawyer claim that he is picked on because he is open about what he does, yet Ralsky
denied it to Brian Livingston last year.
More about Ralsky.
Some good anti-spam information sources and tools include
Spam Laws,
CAUCE,
SpamCop, and
Spamcon.
posted by pmurray63
on Aug 4, 2002 -
11 comments
Break the Chain has all kinds of nifty resources for stopping the neverending flux of chain mail wandering through your e-mail box, though if you're like me, you'll probably just read through the chain archives for their amusement. A nice companion to
Snopes for your hoax-debunking needs.
posted by headspace
on Jan 13, 2002 -
0 comments
Ironic Spam article Does anyone find it ironic that a NY Times article on the horrors of spam is accompanied by one of those ads that automatically plays annoying music and requires you to find and then click on the off switch every time the page loads?
posted by Poagao
on Dec 23, 2001 -
8 comments
MSN blocks its subscribers from sending mail with non-Outlook mail clients, as of last week. Like AOL, MSN hasn't allowed its subscribers to check their MSN mail with non-MS mail clients
since the beginning. Last April, they
banned access to non-MSN SMTP servers (
to block spam relaying), but you could still send mail to other ISPs through MSN's SMTP server using your mail client of choice with a
simple fix. Now, you can only do so if you switch to Outlook or Outlook Express (quietly announced
on their site and via
e-mail). All others (
Eudora,
Pegasus,
Agent,
Yahoo Mail,
Netscape Messenger) are left cold.
(more inside...)
posted by waxpancake
on Jul 31, 2001 -
30 comments
Has anyone noticed an increase in spam after registering with
Weblogs.com?
Whenever I have to give a valid email address to a site (for authentication or whatever), I usually give them theirsitename@mysite.com . This is to protect me from spam harvesters. Now, I feel quite sure that the Weblogs/Userland guys aren't harvesting email addresses for commercial purposes, but today's spam for "LONG DISTANCE AT 1.4 CENTS PER MINUTE" marks the second spam in two weeks addressed to weblogs@mysite . Has anyone else noticed this trend?
posted by Unxmaal
on Jun 7, 2001 -
52 comments
Mail Expire is a temporary mail forwarding service.
It's free and takes about 30 seconds to set up a bogus email address that will expire after a period of time (the default interval is 12 hours). It's great for signing up to those FREE!! trial Internet services without automatically becoming an "asset" of some database marketing (read: spam) crowd.
Because it's your inbox.
Oh yeah, please use this power for good. Don't use it to sign up to Metafilter or anything, I'm sure Matt will ban it anyway.
posted by lagado
on May 18, 2001 -
8 comments
SpamCon 2001 gets underway in one month. It's a meeting of the minds to crush spam and
guys like this. But it's probably too late. Can legislation ever make a dent in spam? Are technical solutions possible (no open SMTP ports allowed)?
posted by mathowie
on Apr 26, 2001 -
10 comments
Notice of Revocation of Independence appears to be spamming all over email. I found it in several listbots and
egroups, and after some intensive searching I think I
may have found
the original source but
I'm guessing and may be wrong. Very funny, very telling, and with more than a grain of
wake up call to it. Considering how we take our freedom for granted in America, I question whether or not we really deserve it any longer.
posted by ZachsMind
on Nov 22, 2000 -
15 comments
The GOP just spammed me. I received an email sent supposedly on behalf of "Jim Nicholson, Chairman, Republican National Committee" inviting me to become an "eChampion":
Once you've registered as an eChampion, you will receive fact-filled e-mails twice a week on the upcoming election, the candidates' stands on issues, etc. Your role as an eChampion is to send these e-mails on to AS MANY friends, neighbors and family members as possible, and invite them to register as eChampions themselves at http://www.echampions2000.com.
No, I didn't opt-in to some Republican mailing list. For a start, I'm Canadian, in Canada, and if I was going to vote for a right-wing wing-nut, it would be
Stockwell Day. Talk about "idea viri"...
posted by tranquileye
on Oct 10, 2000 -
6 comments
Fight spam with silly human tricks! This service is built around a low rent Turing test. Anyone who is not already on your list of approved correspondents gets their message bounced back to them. If the poor sod can't pass a "fast and simple"
challenge, their mail won't be passed on to you as they'll be presumed to be a spambot. I use Pine: I guess I'd fail. (Found via
Webmonkey).
posted by maudlin
on Oct 5, 2000 -
12 comments
So I just got a bizarre e-mail from a "Yustas Kotz-Gottlieb." Has anyone ever got one? I'll post the entire text as a comment. It appears to be an atrocious, perhaps Mad Lib-generated essay on an imaginary painting. Based on an AltaVista search for "Jaisini," I've concluded that this person posts the essay (and others) on random guestbooks and e-mails it to random people (like me).
This is the closest I can find to a cogent explanation, but I'm still bumfuzzled as to the point. Fake essays as performance art? It's like
McSweeney's, as guest-edited by Kafka.
posted by luke
on Mar 24, 2000 -
2 comments
Can you help a brother out with a little money laundering?
So, I was thinking about this otherwise unremarkable spam while cleaning out my inbox when it dawned on me how familiar it was. I have seen this letter (with slight modifications to suit the contemporary political news from Nigeria) three times in my life. The first one I remember was over
10 years ago (on oniony paper, soft brown fibery envelope, red mock-official stamp). And I was wondering: how many of you have seen a postal version of this letter? Did I just fluke out, or is this letter so common that it is some obscure junk mail counterpart to
Coca-cola, Princess Diana & Baywatch? I kind of like to think of it as the fraudspam equivalent of the nervous
Don Knotts.
posted by sylloge
on Mar 11, 2000 -
1 comment
Today on a web list I subscribe to, some members were complaining about spam and the need for sites to have privacy policies that promise not to sell your address. I have a hotmail address that I use whenever a site requires an email address and doesn't post a privacy policy. I hadn't checked my account in a month, but
I did today and look what was in it. 74 useless messages in 30 days. Thanks spammers.
posted by mathowie
on Nov 21, 1999 -
0 comments
