Has anybody noticed spam getting smarter all of a sudden?
We’ve got a pretty good filter at the office, but I just checked a personal account a minute ago, and noticed something ominous. Instead of the usual, nonsensical series of apparently randomly-chosen words and phrases (such as, "magna may far cookies," "parenthetic what above reader" or "Very rhombus whether fiesta"), the headlines make sense. Worse, they are keyed to recent news developments, which could fool the unwary into thinking they are about to read something relevant and/or interesting.
Some examples from my mail today:
- The Discovery crew conducted three sp…
- Bush’s remarks were picked up by the …
- A massive tsunami in the Indian Ocean…
- Six of those seized were later releas…
- According to the U.S. Geological Surv…
- A British soldier was killed and anot…
This is really not an encouraging development. I wonder how it works? Is someone keying these things in, or is the software going about and cloning real news stories, or what?
Whatever it is, somebody needs to put a stop to that … stuff.
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Heh. And I thought Lexwolf was a real person… I’d hardly call his offerings “smart spam” though.
More like “full of bologna”…
Capital A – remember the last time you got into ad hominem attacks you left the blog. Now you came back, which is great, but why get into the personal attacks. Let’s keep it civil. Where’s Herb or Paul DeMarco anyway? Argue issues, not personal jibes.
Brad,I’m no computer expert(at all),but have you tried using Firefox’s Thunderbird for email.
Another thing I’d like to know,is how many people on this blog still use Internet Explorer.
I’m forced to use Internet Explorer at the office.
Firefox here… and Yahoo’s spam filter seems to work pretty well for me.
…and I have to tell ya,my pop-up blocker goes into overdrive when I’m on this site.
Capital A – remember the last time you got into ad hominem attacks you left the blog. Now you came back, which is great, but why get into the personal attacks. Let’s keep it civil. Where’s Herb or Paul DeMarco anyway? Argue issues, not personal jibes.
Posted by: Dave
Dave, I left because I grew tired of trying to talk sense to those of your like mind. I promised not to come after you in any vicious way, and I haven’t.
You asking me to be civil is hilarious, though. You’ve softened a bit, but your comrades haven’t. If you three want to hammer others for their opinions, then I’ll continue to pick you apart and be rather pointed with the trio of intolerance.
Move towards civility, yourselves. Go ahead. I’ll follow.
(sharpening the point of razor wit)
I use Firefox, but not for e-mail. Well, I use it to GET to my Earthlink web mail.
Would I be able to set it up so that my Earthlink mail comes in on Thunderbird?
Looking for advice here.
There are web crawlers which search blogs and mine data out of them, such as e-mail addresses. The blog subject gives them clues of which phony subject to use in their spam to the e-mail addresses.
Brad,I’m not really sure.What you could do,is
get a Thunderbird account,keep the Earthlink too,then slowly migrate to Thunderbird by using it more often.I hope I haven’t confused you.Maybe someone with more expertise will chime in.
Brad, I’m not a computer geek so for detailed tech advice you’ll have to ask someone else. However, as long as your Earthlink email has POP3 and SMTP access you shouldn’t have a problem. You will need to know the incoming and outgoing servers (probably included with your welcome letter when you signed up with Earthlink, otherwise just ask them). Just download Thunderbird and go through the account setup.
Bill, that wouldn’t work because there is no Thunderbird account. Thunderbird is simply a program on your computer which allows you to access your email at whatever account you have.
Brad,Thunderbird IS a separate email account and you CAN import your Eartlink mail to it.
Wrong, Bill. T-Bird is NOT a separate email account for the simple reason that you can’t do anything at all with it unless you do have an account at Earthlink, your own website or elsewhere. In fact, you can have T-Bird manage several email accounts for you but without those accounts you have nothing.
By all means, continue to wallow in your misconceptions but don’t drag other people in as well.
Lex,you’re probably right(mea culpa),anyway it’s a great program for Brad’s problem.
I’ve been mowing the lawn and I’m a little dizzy.
Capital A – Now if I can just get Herb to be civil.. Now that is really hilarious!!!!!