28 June 2007

new spam phenomenon



has anyone else been getting this new form of spam? I can't find the post that someone in my small hermeneutic blog circle wrote ages ago about those image-spams to get past the text spam-filters and thereby sell you things. The post detailed the problem of load to the e-mail system: these spams were larger than text spams and thus more problematic for the overall health of the interwebs.

The ol' viagra-image-spam weighs in at about 10-20 Kb; the one with the attachment of random devotional music in the picture above weighs in at 500K. I've received this as well as a scanned 'personal letter' of fairly random sentences and other things--none of these seem to be attempting to sell me stuff directly. Leading me to conclude they're of the spam variety that seeks merely to get a reply of some sort in order to confirm your email address and then truly spam you. Or there could be something hidden in the jpg files to destroy my computer (doubtful). Or maybe if you play the hymn backwards it spells out L-U-C-I-F-E-R or similar. Or, if you start singing it at the moment the lion roars in Wizard of Oz....hm. Anyone else getting these? or just me?

3 comments:

Dan said...

I thought it was a beautiful hymn but if you didn't want me to send it to you, you could have just said so! [cry]. No, sike, but I haven't gotten this type of spam. Lately the spams that slip into my inbox all start with the sentence "I'm bored." It's insulting. You're bored, so you spam ME? You only spam me when you have NOTHING BETTER TO DO? No, I will not view your webcam! You're going to have to do better than that, Katrina! PS: you obviously aren't a PC user, if you so brazenly open up attachments from unknown sources like that. That's hot.

Lilita said...

None of this kind of spam for me either, but in a totally random aside, the picture and the hymn in question happen to be taken directly from the LDS (Mormon) hymnal that we use every Sunday. In fact, both the text and the music of that particular hymn were written by Mormon women in the 70's.

All of which means...your spammer is a Mormon...? Weird.

tekne said...

Wow. I was wondering about that--maybe I'm just randomly on someone's group list (for my name is fairly er, common and boring, although I'm not bored, Dan). I also wanted to read extra significance into the upside-down nature of said scan, and muse on the fact that back in the day, when I was pretty much the only person I knew who knew how to use a scanner, we did it right...can no one make pdfs? or crop? or rotate? or scan in B&W or 'Text' mode rather than colour? this *is* a sign of the end. but I digress....