{"id":179,"date":"2014-09-01T23:05:28","date_gmt":"2014-09-02T03:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/?p=179"},"modified":"2014-09-01T23:05:28","modified_gmt":"2014-09-02T03:05:28","slug":"spam-tools-in-the-wrong-hands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/2014090123\/spam-tools-in-the-wrong-hands","title":{"rendered":"SPAM tools in the wrong hands"},"content":{"rendered":"

At best, SPAM tools in the wrong hands are a nuisance. An example<\/i> is the user failing to configure their program properly, resulting in noise emails with Subject<\/b> lines containing strings such as [?var<\/code> that are easily filtered out.<\/p>\n

August 28th was a day where some truly incompetent SPAM wannabe launched their campaign without even bothering to include a “payload” (e.g., a link to a Web site they want you to visit). On that date, I received nearly 400 SPAM messages with unpatterned From<\/b> addresses and plausible Subject<\/b> lines, each containing two lines of random text selections, mostly at least semi-complete sentences – and nothing else. It made finding real messages nearly impossible, and setting up an automated filter to block the noise unfeasible.<\/p>\n

There were a couple things I noticed in the noise that made me decide I wanted to save the lot for inspection and contemplation, tidbits of at least marginally useful or interesting information, such as “PLANC is a language in the PASCAL family<\/i>” (a fact I’m sure I knew at one point but had forgotten) and “Therefore, it takes an average worker over one year to make as much money as his boss makes in one day<\/i>” (I’m curious to know where that<\/i> conclusion came from.) I copied the messages to a file whose contents you can find here<\/a> if you’re interested.<\/p>\n

By the time I’d gone through the lot, marked them as SPAM, then went through Thunderbird’s Trash folder to delete them again to make sure I hadn’t thrown a baby out with the bath water, I’d lost a couple of hours more than I usually do to the SPAM problem for the day.<\/p>\n

All of which begs the question “what are the right<\/i> hands for SPAM tools to be in?<\/span>” I had some thoughts on the matter in my previous SPAMmers are *so* stupid \u2013 or are they?<\/a> post…<\/p>\n

\n

We are going to run out of oil.<\/strong> Before that happens, we MUST<\/em> have a replacement source of energy and feed stock for our civilization that has become so dependent on plastic. The time to act is NOW!!<\/em> Please visit SpacePowerNow.org<\/a> to help build a solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At best, SPAM tools in the wrong hands are a nuisance. An example is the user failing to configure their program properly, resulting in noise emails with Subject lines containing strings such as [?var that are easily filtered out. August 28th was a day where some truly incompetent SPAM wannabe launched their campaign without even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":187,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}