“Tenderly malevolent.” The spam itself was not terribly interesting (just another pump ‘n’ dump penny stock scam), but the subject line is priceless.
Spam subject line of the day
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Tag Archives: spam
Amusing spam subject lines
“Cash out, low voltage protection”
Spam subject of the day
“SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT: aliphatic coercion amtrak”
Now, if you’re going to comply with the law and put the “SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT” in your subject, why bother to use a hash-busting random word generator in the rest of the subject line? People who’re filtering spam are going to filter on the “SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT” part of the subject line!
Unless it’s not random, and the spamvertised Web site really is about sexually explicit rape scenes involving organic compounds with an open-chain structure on trains…
…and if it is, man, there’s a kink I never knew about!
When good companies go bad: how Google learned to stop worrying and love spam
Okay. So, Google’s founders have an unofficial slogan, which is a part of Google’s genetic DNA: Don’t be evil. Nice idea, that; do well and do good.
But in my experience, “don’t be evil” has become more of…well, a suggestion than a statement of corporate policy. No, I’m not talking about the way Google records information about searches or how the Goolge toolbar inserts paid links into other people’s Web sites–frankly, I don’t care about any of that.
I’m talking about something different: spam. And the fact that Google likes it.
Oh, now I’m not suggesting Google engages in spam itself; when you’re Google, you don’t need to spam. Everyone uses you anyway. I’m talking about the fact that Google supports spammers. And it’s not even a question of supporting spammers for profit, like Savvis does, or allowing people to host spam software, like MCI Worldcom does, or allowing people to host virus and malware droppers, like Peer 1 does. What those companies do is reprehensible, of course, but it’s also understandable: they profit directly from it. The spammers give them cash, they look the other way (or in Savvis’ case, actually help shield the spammers).
No, Google supports spammers, but doesn’t even do it for profit. Google supports spammers because it simply can’t be bothered to hire anyone to do anything about it.
The entire net abuse community shuddered when Google took over Deja News and started Google Groups. Google, of course, insisted that Google Groups would serve a valuable function, and would not be used by spammers; they set up an abuse address, they promised that spammers would not be tolerated, and so on, and so on.
Now, a few years later, it seems that Google’s motto has changed from “Don’t be evil’ to “Don’t bother.”
Google Groups has become, as many people predicted, a wretched hive of scum and spammers. I’ve personally seen more spam coming from Google Groups in the past few months than from any other single newsgroup source in the world–Google has dethroned the previous reigning champions of UseNet spam (Skynet.be, newsfeeds.com, and usenetnews.com) in the sheer volume of spew and in their stubborn refusal to stem the tide. In just the past few hours, I’ve collected some nuggets of Google’s outstanding offerings to the Internet community here
And while I’m in a posting frenzy…
…the Fun Link o’ the Day: Cartoons inspired by spam subject lines. Funny, more or less work-safe, ganked from foxmagic.
Whew! Another convention, another %#$@ hurricane…
What’s the deal with hurricanes landing on Tampa every time we go to a convention?
Anyway, we’re back from FetishCon, which was huge fun–much, much, much better than either of us had anticipated (and Shelly got suspended!). I’ll be posting some decidedly not work-safe pics later.
Since the convention hotel was about ten minutes from home, we didn’t get a room, but drove back and forth to the con. We weren’t counting, of course, on getting clobbered by the latest hurricane, so by the end of the weekend, things were getting a bit tricky…we were, quite literally, dodging debris in the road (including fallen traffic lights, road signs, trees, and the like) each way. We didn’t suffer any real damage, and didn’t even lose power, thought the hotel did. My office got a bit flooded, too.
Good news: Logged on to one of the net-admin newsgroups I read this morning (where I had posted this saga of a spammer named Art Schwartz and my dealings with his Web hosting firm), and discovered that the resulting backlash against Hopone Internet was great enough, and enough people chose to blacklist Hopone as a result, that Hopone threw in the towel and terminated Art and his Web site permanently. Y’know, I wonder if he realizes I would never have made such a big stink of it if he hadn’t started emailing me death threats.
And just for fun:
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I amNyarlathotep! The 999 forms of Nyarlathotep are a point of meditation for the true initiate. It is through these manifold faces that the secrets of the universe are made known. Called “The Crawling Chaos”, Nyarlathotep is the disembodied ego of Azathoth and thus the universal “I” of known reality. Some of the many documented forms are; Father of Knives, Nephren-Ka, the Black Man, the Beast of the Lashing Tongue to name a few. |
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| Which Great Old One are you? | |
The return of Art Schwartz: a sordid tale
Many of you already know the backstory of this tale. Namely:
Periodically for the past couple of years, I and other readers of newsgroups like comp.graphics.apps.photoshop, alt.graphics.photoshop, and the like have been spammed by a particularly slimy spammer named Art Schwartz, who collects email addresses from graphics-related newsgroups and spams his Web site, www.perfect-shareware.com, where he says one can get Photoshop and other high-ticket graphics apps for $29.95. It’s a scam, of course; he’s a credit card fraudster, not a pirate, and those dumb enough to fall for the bait get (1) a list of pirate Web sites and (2) big credit card bills.
He’s been hosted by an outfit called Cove Software Systems (“Covesoft”) for years. Covesoft has for years ignored LARTs and permitted him to spam. Recently, as these sorts of outfits do, Covesoft went titsup and got bought by Superb Internet, the retail marketing arm of Hopone. So when some spam showed up in my main email address and one of my spamtrap addresses, I sent ’em along to Superb’s abuse address.
The next day, I get a rash of threatening emails, as documented here, from the spammer. Okay, that’s not cool–so I pick up the phone and have a nice long chat with a person at Superb who identified himself as the head of their abuse department.
The good bits:
The person I spoke to claimed Superb/Hopone have strict zero-tolerance spam policies. Okay, I ask, why is this Web site still up? We haven’t received any complaints, he says. Ah, but you have, I tell him, from me, on thus and such a date, with these headers–would you like me to send you the spam again? Oh, yes, we have received complaints, he says, but our policy is not to take any action unless we receive a number of complaints from different people. You have, I say–I can give you the email addresses of about a half-dozen Usenet readers who’ve LARTed you, there’s a conversation on one of the Photoshop newsgroups about it right now.
So then he says, Well, the official policy of my bosses is that as long as our customers pay their bills, they can do anything they want, so long as what they’re doing is not illegal and doesn’t get us into SPEWS or Spamhaus. Sez I, spamming addresses scraped from newsgroups is illegal, the CAN-SPAM law is right on point about this. You’re right, it is, I’ll pull the site right now, he says, and sure enough, Perfect-Shareware.com stops resolving that afternoon.
Fast forward to earlier this week, when I get an email from abuse@hopone.net in my mailbox. The email says We have put www.perfect-shareware.com back online. If you feel this customer is doing something illegal, contact the police, not us. The business relationship between Hopone Internet and this customer is none of your business. Do not email us again.
So, just for the record: Hopone/Superb Internet are black-hat spam supporters. No reasonable person should touch them with a ten-foot pole–which is, of course, why you’ll find criminals like Art Schwartz using them.
The normal course of a spam-supporting business is to go bankrupst. When it happens to Hopone, it can’t be soon enough.
[Friends only] Victory!
I rarely make friends-only posts, but given the circumstances, I thought it was appropriate this time…
A few weeks ago, I posted about how a notorious long-term spammer and convicted criminal named Art Schwartz has been emailing threats to me for reporting his spamming activities to his Web host. In fact, I even put some of the emailed threats he sent up on a Web site.
Well, yesterday, I finally got completely sick of his spamming and his abuse, and I picked up the phone and had an hour-long conversation with the security and abuse department head of his Web hosting provider, Superb Internet. As a result, Superb agreed to pull his Web site. It went down yesterday afternoon.
Today, if I have time, I plan to give the Hallendale, FL police department a call and chat with them about the threats he’s sent.
I do not respond well to being bullied, threatened, or intimidated. 🙂
Shut up! Bloody vikings!
Record Broken: 82% of U.S. Email is Spam
Outdoing most analysts’ worst predictions, spam accounted for 82 percent of all U.S. email last month.
After a two-month drop in spam, the number of unsolicited bulk email skyrocketed in April, bringing the saturation number up to record levels here in the U.S. and across the world, according to MessageLabs, Inc., a security company based in New York. […]
Of that 82%, I think at least 75% of it landed in my email box. This shit is obnoxious.
For the record, I do not want a bigger penis, larger breasts, a new home mortgage, a copy of Windows XP for $49, or a vacation in Orlando. I will not give anyone my bank account number so they can transfer $28,000,000 from Nigeria, watch Michelle have wild sex with barnyard animals on her secret dorm-room Webcam, or invest in a fertilizer company’s stok at 16 cents a share. I do not have a timeshare for sale, I do not need any Vicodin, and I am not looking for a new partner at Matchup.com.
Last time I checked, “eifsTuFy7mUuWbDz” was not a word, and if you’re going to try to sell something to me with such enticing offers as “Friend, twisting from my embrace compressor up and doing!” you may want to rethink your approach.
Call me whacky, I do not see how giving six anonymous strangers $5 each today is going to get me $17,000 tomorrow. My employer is perfectly happy even though I have no college degree; I am, you see, the owner of the business. I do not want to “Submit to the Natural-Born Bitch, the Princess of Fetish,” but thanks for asking! I do not want to “spatterdrop rap” my “ema1l campa1gn.” I doubt an email entitled “acrylic mango open” is going to help me “cl1mb the ladder to s.u.c.c.e.s.s.”
I do not care what Paris Hilton’s boyfriend used, which herbs are more efficient than via-gra, or what the Survivor cast did when the cameras were off. I was not born yesterday, and I am not going to give you my credit card number, my eBay password, or my ATM PIN number, even if you insist that I will lose my banking privileges, my Internet access, or my firstborn son if I don’t, mkay?
I do not speak Russian, Japanese, Chinese, or Korean, so assume that I’m a lost sale if your message is not even English.
I do not need to spy on all my friends–I have, you see, chosen friends I can trust. I do not want a copy of your Banned CD filled with Amazing Hacker Secrets–I was a hacker before you were even born. I do not need your low-carb diet, your South Beach diet, your herbal diet supplements, your amazing Sudanese dieting secrets, your amazing Chinese dieting secrets, or your amazing body-wrap secrets–I’m skinny enough already, thanks.
I do not want in on the ground floor of your real-estate scheme, your online marketing scheme, or your PayPal pyramid scheme. I do not want high-quality Rolex watches at unbelievably low prices.
I do not need to “fermat haystack enthusiastic sixtieth grasp constraint calamitous garish schroedinger lesotho excess chaplin doubt” my “exact digit aptitude electro cinch bawdy gin hebephrenic pancake fulton myrrh firearm galloway beer blasphemy passenger defecate phantom choir girlish murky anorthosite”–there’s far too much fermat haystacking going on of exact digital aptitudes in this country as it is! (That’s what’s wrong with this world today–too many people don’t respect exact digit aptitudes as God made them.)
So enough already!