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Archive for the ‘Spam & Scam’ Category

Spam Jokes

13 Jun 2006

Man, those spammers sure are becoming creative and funny lately. Every day my Akismet blocks over 60 spam comments, and when I scroll through them to verify if no legit comment has been ‘blacklisted’ I tend to read once in a while what the ’spam meme’ of the moment is. These last few days, I get a lot of jokes. Some are totally not funny, others even make me smile. Then I wonder if I should approve the comment because it’s such a good try… see:

Hello
Mum & Dad decided that the only way to pull off a Sunday afternoon “quickie” with their 8 year old son in the apartment was to send him out on the balcony with an ice cream and tell him to report on all the neighborhood activities.
He began his commentary as his parents put their plan into operation: “There’s a car being towed from the parking lot” he shouted.
A few moments passed. “An ambulance just drove by”
A few moments later, “Looks like the Anderson’s have company” he called out.
“Matt’s riding a new bike…..”
“The Coopers are having sex!!”
Startled, Mother and Dad shot up in bed!!!
Dad cautiously asked, “How do you know they are having sex??”
“Jimmy Cooper is standing out on his balcony with an ice cream too.”

link – alprazolam us
link – alprazolam xanax

Hehe. A classic. Maybe I should start to bundle and publish these spam jokes? I don’t know. They’re plenty. My guess is I’d have a trilogy within the year.

 
 

The Suicide Scam

08 May 2006

Very recently, a Belgian newspaper apparently featured a story that was titled: “Every Week, Two Teens Commit Suicide”. That’s bad. I’m well aware of the fact that troubled minds don’t always seem to find a way out and opt for the (to them) easiest way: ending their life. In my humble opinion, suicide is a selfish way to go. If you think you can make the world a better place by punishing the ones you’ll leave behind, you’re not only stupid but you definitely lack respect for those who love you and are left behind with a load of questions and insecurities. And believe me, there’s always someone who loves you. They might not always show it or say it, but there’s always someone who cares.

Today, just a moment ago, my doorbell rang and some fugitive was standing there. The type of beggars you see in the ‘big’ cities, holding a plastic-wrapped sign in 4 languages that states they have 7 kids and no home, usually with a paper cup from a fastfood restaurant in the other hand. Only this time it was a plastic-wrapped newspaper article and a French and Dutch text that asked to sign the petition against teen suicide. This pissed me off. Not only didn’t the woman speak any of the languages mentioned above, she didn’t seem to be alone either. I looked out my door and saw another women on the other side of the street going door to door as well.

I refused to sign. I’ll tell you why.

Not only is this a lame form of begging, because signing the petition would mean you’d also have to pay €5 (5 Euros = $ 6.45), the woman clearly had no idea at all what she was walking around with. She didn’t understand Dutch, nor French, nor English. She just pointed to the article, the text and the price you’d have to pay. This is an outrage. Really. That ‘official petition’ she walk around with was a simple bundle of blank papers, which featured about a dozen of (fake?) signatures already. No heading, no columns, no nothing.

The other reason why I refused to sign is: I agree that there is a problem with teen suicide, if that article is real (I haven’t seen it myself in the papers I read). Heck, I know that there’s a problem, even without that article. But collecting signatures while going from door to door isn’t going to make the situation better. How can any troubled teen benefit from the fact that ‘x’ people are against teen suicide? That doesn’t help the teen, it doesn’t solve the problem and it sure doesn’t make things better. There was no official organization backing this up.

If it would have been a recognized organization that went door to door, then I’d have signed, but surely not paid. I wouldn’t have signed ‘against’ teen suicide. I’d only have signed if it was to help troubled teens. If they would have sold a calendar for their organization, stickers, anything… then it would have been different. But this was clearly an illegal scam where some imported women were dropped off by the dozen to go around and scam some citizens. I should have called the cops, come to think of it.

How can anyone fall for this? It’s so obviously fake. Even more: how can you go around exploiting a weakness like teen suicide? Dammit it’s stuff like this that makes you narrow-minded, I know. I’m not a racist. I agree that everybody should have a fair chance and that some rotten apples can spoil it for an entire community. That you have to look ‘around’ the rotten apples. But man, there sure are A LOT of rotten apples lately. And apparently a lot of naive people too.

 

Technorati SpamSplogs inc

22 Nov 2005

When I was checking Technorati these last few weeks, it became clear they still have a serious splog and spam issue to deal with. I was performing a search on ‘Coolz0r’ today, it returned 384 results. (Note that I’m not searching for my blog’s URL). A lot of the sites listed are totally unrelated but they link to movies I’ve posted on YouTube, and they just copy the entire description and keywords that belong to specific clips.

Here are some examples : (I’m not going to link, I’ll just put the URL)

Blogs you can’t call splogs right away, but seem to be so, because they link to the clip, but have totally nothing to do with it, and they seem to list ‘random’ content :

http://commercialrealestatehq.com/info/Commercial-Real-
Estate/wwwprivate-real-estate-lenders/ — title : Your Dedicated Commercial Real Estate

http://commercialpropertycentral.com/info/Commercial-Property/2400-

game-advertisements/ — title : Your Dedicated Commercial Real Estate

http://commercialrealestatehq.com/info/Commercial-Real-

Estate/commercials-williams-shaving-gel/ — title : Your Dedicated Commercial Real Estate

http://6×5729fart.blogspot.com/2005/11/bnp-vntas-vxa-32-procent.html — title : Your Fart Articles

http://commercialpropertycentral.com/info/Commercial-Property/real-

estate-attorney-robert-half-legal/ — title : Your Dedicated Commercial Real Estate

Definitely SpamBlogs that copy keywords and descriptions without even linking to the clips and seem to gather random information and links to collect traffic :

http://hc523fart.blogspot.com/2005/11/2006-honda-civic-coupe-and-si-
designed.html — title : helpful fart resources

http://hc523fart.blogspot.com/2005/11/izod-lizard-08222003-0426-

pmteam-ha-c.html — title : helpful fart resources

http://hc523fart.blogspot.com/2005/11/those-bloody-farting-fishand-in-

todays.html — title : helpful fart resources

http://wrqocto403.blogspot.com/2005/11/young-octopus-learns-to-

open.html — title : Internet Octopus Resources

http://wrqocto403.blogspot.com/2005/11/octopus-eats-sharkjust-like-it-

reads.html — title : Internet Octopus Resources

http://6×5729fart.blogspot.com/2005/11/fart-fridayfirst-we-had-mobile-

monday.html — title : Your Fart Articles

http://wrqocto403.blogspot.com/2005/11/comic-139-howd-your-date-

gomonday.html — title : Internet Octopus Resources

Removed from the Blogger index, but still listed in Technorati :

http://jr60fart.blogspot.com/2005/11/brown-noisewhooo-tried-it-
_113258759823941935.html — title : Quick Fart Resources

http://fartvhh.blogspot.com/2005/11/metasonix-re-tm-2-hzv-

tracking_20.html — title : Internet Fart Information

http://v05fart.blogspot.com/2005/11/urban-skills-drive-by-fartinga-

classic.html — title : Helpful Fart Resources (again)

http://fartvhh.blogspot.com/2005/11/13.html — title : Internet Fart Information

This only covers the first 20 results of page 1 : 16 out of 20 posts are
NOT RELATED to what they display or link to.
Focussing on the next two pages :
On page 2 : 13 out of 20 results are bogus.
On page 3 : 17 out of 20 results are spam.

I’ll stop counting from here, but as you can see : 46 out of 60 results are spam. That’s about 76.6 %. I don’t have to draw a picture… the rest of the results of the first six pages is likewise. After that things seem to normalize. Since there are only 10 result pages listed, that leaves an accuracy of 50%. But that’s just my two cents.

 

Facts, Figures & A Bunch of Links

16 Oct 2005

It seems the more things you have to do in real life, the less time you have to post about it. That too goes for reading an RSS reader, or cleaning out your inbox. I’m going to summarize the interesting things I read recently and point out some places that have good stuff going on.

Philipp thinks computer keyboards can also be used as terrorist’s tool because “By entering letters into this input device, digital messages can be created to speed up communication between different terrorist organisations. Among other things, this may be used to discuss potential targets.” Too funny ! Also check what he writes about the post-it notes! Really :)

[SearchEngineWatch] reports on 2 reports that researched how we search. :)
“40 % of those conducting online research go to search engines first. Still, 57 % use retailer Web sites to research products before making a decision.
The study also found that the same number of people — one-third — search by brand as much they do by general category of product and/or service. Men use search engines more when researching a product: 69 % compared to 65 % of women.” – [Read more]

Google now lets you submit Flash-based advertisement for your Google AdWords campaigns. via [BestingAdwords]>[InsideAdwords]

Yahoo is testing a new approach to delivering news search results, combining traditional media sources with “citizen journalism” from blogs and images from its Flickr photo sharing site.” So now News, Blogs & Flickr are all scanned for results when you enter a query. via [SearchEngineWatch] -
[Submit Your RSS Feed to Yahoo] and get included.

The new Bluetooth-enabled Apple Remote, a new Mac user interface for navigating your media collection called Front Row & the New iMac G5.

Google has silently added a Bookmarks feature to My Search History, enabling you to quickly tag and comment any web page you’ve visited. [InsideGoogle]

courtesy of the google blogoscoped guy
Just the Noise.

“Best of all, sites in the Spam Google index try to rip you off by being relevant to your search. And isn’t that what Google is all about, relevancy?”
Heheh :) [Check out SpamGoogle] and have a blast ! via [Philipp]

The Netcraft “October 2005 Survey” found 74,409,971 sites, an increase of 2.68 million sites from its September survey. The gain makes 2005 the strongest year ever for Internet growth, with the Web adding 17.5 million sites, easily surpassing the previous annual mark of 16 million during the height of the dot-com boom in 2000. [eMarketer] > [LVB.net]

“Never moon a werewolf” and other funny oneliners on [NetScrap]
“Ever wonder if illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup?” and other great quotes by comedians, also on [NetScrap] > [Blogium]

I’m worth : $219,960 says [Nathan], now to make that clear to the bank and investors team so they can balance me out. I could do with some wheels. :)

SorryGottaGo is the perfect alternative to end ANY phone conversation you want to stop. Tired of those telemarketeers calling you? Tired of listening to your mother in law? When you’re looking for a good excuse to end it : [Here's Your Answer] – via [GoogleBlogoscoped]

Pimping the IMDB [InternetMovieDatabase] from Amazon with [SearchEngineWatch] came in very handy for some reviews I was doing.
College Life, Powered by Google. “You spend your life dealing with information. A lot of it is academic, a lot more is personal, it all matters, and you can probably use better tools for handling it effectively.” On this page, Google likes to introduce you to a few of them. via [InsideGoogle]

Blogging Predicted in 1837? A talented, prophetical Russian prince by the name of Vladimir Odoevsky (1803-1869) apparently predicted the internet and described the process of what we call ‘blogging’. [Read]

Ultimate R|Mail : Scott Kingery used R|mail to post his del.icio.us links via FeedBurner onto his blog. Are you using R|Mail ? Let us know how, and tell us what you experience.

 

Changing Plans & Links For August 28th

28 Aug 2005

Okay, change of plans. Seems I won’t be leaving on september the 1st, since I’ve got to collect my results on the 9th. We’ll be leaving the 10th or 11th as a logical consequence, because I really need to have a vacation with my girlfriend. I’ve been studying all summer so we couldn’t really ‘go away’ and ‘tune out’ for a couple of days. She’s been working a lot too, and we both definitely need the time off together before we start another year of studying.

That said, I’m sort of skipping the team-building weekend they planned over at the college. Seems I’ll be investing in personal relationships instead of building up a relationship with my new class. Hey, new class : it’s not that I don’t like you guys, but I really need to do this. Same goes for the teachers. I’ll see you when I get back, and then I’ll be there for a 110%.

I just need to see a few sunsets, have some cocktails with little straw hats at the seaside with my girl and ride a donkey.

This item recently made it to my wish list :

Konica
Konica Minolta’s new DiMAGE Z6
[Read More]

There’s four more exams coming up, so I’ve got some more studying to do. I’m off !

Interesting stuff I’ve recently read and think you should read too :

 

419 – Behind the Scenes

08 Aug 2005

Finally some news from Nigeria that doesn’t start with a ‘dear friend’ or ‘congratulations’ ! Yes, it seems the Nigerian government itself is slowly turning in the right direction to combat an icky soar of the internet. The 419-scammers are battered on their homegrounds. At last. Still I’ve always been wondering what the day of such a scammer looked like. Heheh. I could picture the dusty streets with some crooked international telephone stores and internet cafes already. Some funky coloured folks sitting in chairs outside on the curb, chatting… bragging about their latest theme. And every time the outlook says ‘ding’, they race for the-recuperated-pc-formerly-known-as-western.

From [Yahoo!News]:

“Festac Town is where communication specialists operating underground sell foreign telephone lines over which a scammer can purport to be calling from any city in the world. Here lurk master forgers and purveyors of such software as “e-mail extractors,” which can harvest e-mail addresses by the million. Now, however, a 3-year-old crackdown is yielding results, Nigerian authorities say.”

“In the con that Internet users are probably most familiar with, the e-mailer poses as a corrupt official looking for help in smuggling a fortune to a foreign bank account. E-mail or fax recipients are told that if they provide their banking and personal details and deposit certain sums of money, they’ll get a cut of the loot.”

From the life of a scammer :

Kele B., who won’t give his surname, says he couldn’t find work after finishing high school in 2000 in the southeastern city of Owerri, so he drifted with friends to Lagos, where he tried his hand at boxing.

Then he discovered the Web.

Now he spends his mornings in Internet cafes on secondhand computers with aged screens, waiting “to see if my trap caught something,” he says.

Elekwa, a chubby-faced 28-year-old who also keeps his surname to himself, shows up in Festac Town driving a Lexus and telling how he was jobless for two years despite having a diploma in computer science.

His break came four years ago when the chief of a fraud gang saw him solve what seemed like “a complex computer problem” at a business center in the southeastern city of Umuahia and lured him to Lagos.

He won’t talk about his scams, only about their fruits: “Now I have three cars, I have two houses and I’m not looking for a job anymore.”

Read the entire story on [Yahoo!News] and the related entries on Coolz0r :

[Mikhail Khodorkovski Needs Me] & [419 Scam, A Bridge Too Far]

 
 

Microsoft AntiSpy Downgrades Claria Apps

08 Jul 2005

According to a report at The Register, Eric Howes – a spyware researcher – has confirmed reports that Microsoft AntiSpyware has downgraded Claria’s adware from a recommended action of ‘Quarantine’ to a lower level action of ‘Ignore’. Screenshots posted by Howes at Broadband Reports confirm this.

[The Register] & [Broadband Reports] From [The Unofficial MSWeblog]

“In the full-sized screenshot, it appears that Claria’s GAIN, DashBar, DateManager, and Trickler applications are the ones being rated as software which can be safely ignored.

In the lengthy thread of comments on the Broadband Reports posting, the universal sentiment is that this is serious miscalculation on Microsoft’s part – a reaction I completely agree with. It would appear this change was actually made back in June, not in the most recent update as was originally reported. Microsoft has to know that the general public, trusting them to provide good advice in this tool, will accept the ‘Ignore’ recommendation and allow the Claria adware onto their systems.”

MS Ignores Claria

Also read Why is AntiSpyware Going Easy on Claria by Nathan Weinberg.

Related Stories :
MICROSOFT PLANNING TO TAKE OVER CLARIA
WHENU IS LEGAL
SECTOR SPYWARE : BEN EDELMAN VS WHENU ETC
TAKING ON A $6 BILLION MARKET WITH BEHAVIORAL ADVERTISING

 
 

419-Scam : A Bridge Too Far

07 Jul 2005

Only just recently I’ve been contacted by Mikhail Khodorkovski’s personal secretary in order to help cash in a fund. Shortly after that two other mails tumbled in my inbox. One from Serge Kargbo from Benin and an other one we’re pulling a joke with right now, so I can’t name him/her yet. Point of this post : apparently 419ers have gone a step further and now Google their ‘prospects’. Doing so, they obtain info such as chat-names on hotmail or AIM, or Skype contact listing. Now they start bothering you by e-Phone, and chat-client too.

[IrishEyes] writes on his TypePad :

“KILKENNY — One mark of arriving on the fringes of the searchable internet is that along with Google finding out who you are and Yahoo automagically putting you into set categories is that the spammers get to know and share your business too. Summer 2005 is the first time I’ve been addressed by name by Nigerian 419 spammers. It’s part an honour and a curse.

The 419ers also have my Skype and Yahoo Messenger details so I’m getting cold calls that I can block with the software. It’s a bit of a bother and also a rite of passage. Fortunately, the technology is a half-step ahead of the spammers and I can control the unwanted noise.”

Through [Findory]

So beware. — But… you can also join the fun :)

419 Eater The ScamBaiters

“What is scambaiting? Well, put simply, you enter into a dialogue with scammers, simply to waste their precious time and resources. Whilst you are doing this, you will be helping to keep the scammers away from real potential victims.

It doesn’t matter if you are new to this ’sport’ or a hardened veteran; if you’re wasting the time of a scammer, or frustrating them in any way, well that’s good enough for us.”

419

If you’d like to, and IF you feel prepared, you can join in because, coincidentally :

MIKHAIL KHODORKOVSKY MIGHT NEED YOU TOO