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BURNINGBIRD
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a node at the edge
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July 08, 2002
 Weblog spam bot
It looks like the evil email spam bots have discovered my little virtual neighborhood. Tom Matrullo received a junk email seemingly addressed by me today, at the exact time I also received an email from me with the same subject. Well, since I didn't send an email with the following in it, I knew it was junk: I AM JONATHAN KANU , A MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF RWA AGENCY. WE ARE EMPOWERED TO ADMINISTER TRUST FUND WELL OVER TEWNTY FOUR MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS (US$300,000.000. 00) FOR THE PROVISION OF RELIEF MATERIALS TO TROUBLED SPOT IN THE WEST AFRICAN SUB-REGION. I wrote the following to Tom as likely explanation of what happened: You have people who link to you that also link to me (we're only 1 degree of separation apart in the loosely joined pieces game). It would be very easy for a spam bot to grab these links and follow them back to our respective weblogs. Both you and I also embed our email addresses directly in our web pages with the mailto hypertext link. This means our email addresses are easily scrapped from the page. The very nature of weblogging makes this type of spam bot activity easier, because we all link to each other - we provide a web of opportunity for these nasty little critters. What we'll need to do is send our agents in South Africa, Mike and Nithia, out to beat the crap out of this JONATHAN KANU. Show him not to mess around with webloggers.
Posted by Bb at July 08, 2002 10:54 AM Comments
it's no coincidence that porridgeboy has been in that vacinity lately. Posted by: gary turner on July 8, 2002 11:58 AMAll the salt PB can lick if he brings me the head of this JONATHON KANKU. Man doesn't even spell his first name right... Posted by: Bb aka Shelley aka Weblog Bosswoman on July 8, 2002 12:01 PMthere's no imagination in those "I have $5M american dollars I need to spend on healthcare products following my monarch father's death" spams. I prefer the chinese one's which genuinely seem to be about selling high quality machined parts, gears, sprockets and cylinder head gaskets. like i need 250,000 high tensile steel sprockets anytime soon. Posted by: gary turner on July 8, 2002 12:37 PMOoh, luvverly! An all-expenses-paid trip to the idyllic (but sadly troubled) West African sub-region. I can leave tonight. Who do I speak to about the expense account? Oh, by the way, what would you like done with his head? If you don't actually require it delivered to your door, I'm sure I could offload it at a profit at just about any market in Lagos (or Johannesburg for that matter). Posted by: Nithia Govender on July 8, 2002 01:11 PMWell, shit, Nithia - Gary had the accounts but he spent all the monies on these sprockets and penis enlargers. However, expense money is being diverted to Mike - you can deliver the head to him, he'll fork over the funds... Posted by: Bb aka Shelley aka Weblog Bosswoman on July 8, 2002 01:23 PM"sprockets and penis enlargers" now what would I want with a sprocket? Posted by: gary on July 8, 2002 03:48 PMcan't wait until spammers begin posting adverts as comments to blogs Posted by: bumr on July 8, 2002 04:15 PMGOOD DAY, I AM SORRY TO BOTHER YOU , BUT THIS IS A MANNER OF BUSINESS THAT NEEDS A JOINT VENTURE WITH A PERSON BASED OUT MY COUNTRY I AM JONATHAN KANU , A MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF RWA AGENCY. WE ARE EMPOWERED TO ADMINISTER TRUST FUND WELL OVER TEWNTY FOUR MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS (US$300,000.000. 00) FOR THE PROVISION OF RELIEF MATERIALS TO TROUBLED SPOT IN THE WEST AFRICAN SUB-REGION. MY GROUP RECENTLY AGREED, UNANIMOUSLY, TO DIVERT TWENTY FOUR MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS ($24 MILLION) INTO A FOREIGN ACCOUNT FOR OUR PERSONAL USE AND BENEFIT. THE SIMPLE MODE OF OPERATION WILL BE JUST FOR US... Posted by: fp on July 8, 2002 05:26 PMJust FYI, this spam-from-bloggers'-domains was discussed recently at Blogroots.... Posted by: stavrosthewonderchicken on July 8, 2002 07:49 PMThanks for pointer Stavros. Wow. I feel honored to be in such company. "Burningbird - email spammer from-to of choice". I could have so much fun with this. Scenario: Wednesday morning several warbloggers open their emails addressed from Burningbird... Posted by: Bb aka Shelley aka Weblog Bosswoman on July 8, 2002 08:20 PMTo prevent further such incidents, have you considered the use of the Email Obfuscator available at http://alicorna.com/obfuscator.html? It's a cgi script that converts the email address you enter into ASCII character entities which work just fine in mailto: links and look exactly the same in a browser, but are (or more accurately not yet) identifiable to email address scraper-bots. Posted by: Roger L.Waggener on July 8, 2002 09:12 PMPost a comment
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