Operation "Oinc-In"!
 

We have set up a test email address to see just how much spam we can get.

[email]mersenneforum@gmail.com[/email]

If you see an opt-in email link, or if you find a situation where you think you can "compromise" this email address to enable it to get more spam, please do so.

We think it will be interesting to see the results!

:spam::grenade:

:spam: + :grenade: = :explode:

no matter what kind of spam?

I can contribute some spam I get. They are mostly the usual "enlarge your manhood", cheap Viagra, Canadian pharmacy, and various money and job scams.

Is this what you are looking for, Mike?

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;320126]We have set up a test email address to see just how much spam we can get.

[email]mersenneforum@gmail.com[/email]

If you see an opt-in email link, or if you find a situation where you think you can "compromise" this email address to enable it to get more spam, please do so.

We think it will be interesting to see the results!

:spam::grenade:[/QUOTE]For some reason the spam I'm getting these days is "married women in your vicinity want to have an affair"; "reply to this mail to receive money-off vouchers at J. Random Supermarket", ZIP files to tell me about the progress of shipments and largely incomprehensible exhortations in Cyrillic script to view particular YouTube links. The latter is especially amusing, given that I hardly ever click on a YouTube link even when recommended by people with excellent credentials such as davieddy.


I'll see if I can persuade any of them to include you in their recipients.

Paul

[QUOTE=xilman;320168]For some reason the spam I'm getting these days is "married women in your vicinity want to have an affair"; "reply to this mail to receive money-off vouchers at J. Random Supermarket", ZIP files to tell me about the progress of shipments and largely incomprehensible exhortations in Cyrillic script to view particular YouTube links. The latter is especially amusing, given that I hardly ever click on a YouTube link even when recommended by people with excellent credentials such as davieddy.


I'll see if I can persuade any of them to include you in their recipients.

Paul[/QUOTE]

Now that you mention it, I do get a lot of the "get laid right now" kind of stuff, too. The oft-cited outfit is "F**kbook". The are also quite a few E-card "invitations".

Dear Xyzzy,

This missive is to inform you that I, the undersigned, feel that it is improper for you to forward my email directly into the spam folder artificially bumping the numbers up regardless of how little regard you may have for my communications.

Sincerely,
Chappy

[QUOTE=kladner;320171]Now that you mention it, I do get a lot of the "get laid right now" kind of stuff, too. The oft-cited outfit is "F**kbook". The are also quite a few E-card "invitations".[/QUOTE]

[URL="http://mersenneforum.org/showpost.php?p=316244&postcount=11"]Y and chappy seem alike[/URL] :devil:

[QUOTE=kracker;320188][URL="http://mersenneforum.org/showpost.php?p=316244&postcount=11"]Y and chappy seem alike[/URL] :devil:[/QUOTE]

Except that I have no interest in contacting eager young ladies. :razz:

I do note that Chappy was referring to a different sort of "hard" ware. :cmd:

[QUOTE=kladner;320201]Except that I have no interest in contacting eager young ladies. :razz:[/QUOTE]


I'm too old and grumpy for either eager or young ladies. Brings on the frumpy old fraus bitte.

[QUOTE=kladner;320201]
I do note that Chappy was referring to a different sort of "hard" ware. :cmd:[/QUOTE]

huh, huh...huh huh... my work laptop was confiscated by the IT dept a little while back. They found recipes for baked goods and computer hardware review sites...proving that I am lame.

W49
 

And we are off to a nice start.

So are you going to the Gay Tantra Festival 2013? :toot:

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;320397]And we are off to a nice start.[/QUOTE]

I am happy to see a lot of email from the "free newsletters" which I subscribed mister Mers into. I selected only a couple of quality providers that are trustworthy and will definitely not forward the email address to third parties. :rolleyes:

[QUOTE=rajula;320463]I am happy to see a lot of email from the "free newsletters" which I subscribed mister Mers into. I selected only a couple of quality providers that are trustworthy and will definitely not forward the email address to third parties. :rolleyes:[/QUOTE]

if they wanted spam just sign up for updates on facebook, twitter and other feed sites.

I have been doing my part. Are you a bed-wetter?

If you really want a tsunami of "spam", you have to get on the list of forged addresses with which mass spammer "[I]sign[/I]" their mass mailings (in [FONT=Calibri]Return-Path: , in [FONT=Calibri]From:, in [FONT=Calibri]envelope-from [/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]). My old work email address was scrapped (I suppose) from the conference websites that had the participant's email freely widely open.

In 2008, on Sunday April 20, a few million emails of the type
[CODE]Your message

To: Happiness
Subject: Better performance
Sent: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 07:14:30 -0400

did not reach the following recipient(s):

Happiness on Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:55:21 -0400
The recipient name is not recognized
The MTS-ID of the original message is:<details omitted>
[/CODE] or
[CODE]Undeliverable: [SPAM (Non-existent user)] - Direct Mail - Local recipient does not exist[/CODE]
or similar variations were received in one day alone. In my work email box. On Monday, the real email was changed and the old one deleted (but without sending any similar messages in reply* or else there would have been a chain reaction, maybe).

____________
*in fact, no serious organization would reply: this is how by exclusion a list of valid users can be constructed!

P.S. Of course any serious email client would know that these were [B]not[/B] from me. There's
[CODE]
Return-Path: <b---v@ myWork.org>
Received: from [B]adsl-11-$$$-201.mia.bellsouth.net (adsl-11-$$$-201.mia.bellsouth.net [65.11.$$$.201])[/B]
by mxdrop147.xs4all.nl (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id m3KDKRMO022003
for <henk....@....nl>; Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:20:31 +0200 (CEST)
(envelope-from b---v@ myWork.org)
[/CODE]
They obviously were [B]not[/B] from the owner of the bellsouth box either (or for that matter thousands of others, the list of which I analyzed and found them originating from all but one continents), but from a virus/worm/whatever they had for a while but that was programmed to wake up on a specific date.

[QUOTE=Batalov;320923] On Monday, the real email was changed and the old one deleted (but without sending any similar messages in reply* or else there would have been a chain reaction, maybe).
[/QUOTE]

You SOB, I'm still waiting for my Happy-funtime pills to arrive. Your email clearly stated, "Please to be sending $20 USD's and self addressing envelopes to...[SPOILER]redacted[/SPOILER]"

well I sent my 20 USD's and got no happy-funtime pills!

And Ms. Chappy left me for some guy who is rich now, because his email was about smuggling monies from Nigeria.

Oh! Hi Henk! Your money was well spent. We bought ourselves a new yacht. :edit:
Money can't buy happiness, you know ...only a lot of money can!

Here is this week's spam report.

:piggie:

Here is this week's spam report.

:piggie:

lookz lik its gettting begger and biigger.

Do you count as spam anything that you can unsubscribe from?

[QUOTE=henryzz;321988]Do you count as spam anything that you can unsubscribe from?[/QUOTE]
Actually, I think something you [I]can't[/I] unsubscribe from (in practice, regardless of any "unsubscribe" link) is quite a good definition of spam.:smile:

[QUOTE=Brian-E;321994]Actually, I think something you [I]can't[/I] unsubscribe from (in practice, regardless of any "unsubscribe" link) is quite a good definition of spam.:smile:[/QUOTE]

Some of the emails in the images look like subscriptions rather than spam.

We are not reading the messages or anything. We are just letting them "fill up the bucket".

We figure eventually one (or more) spammer will sell/give our test email address to another and things will spiral out of control.

Once we have a million spam messages it might be interesting to (somehow) analyze them to see if there are any patterns.

So far we are a bit underwhelmed. We expected to be swamped with spam.

:piggie:

I have found "unsubscribing", when such a link is available, often truly works as advertised. There was a brief period when I had taken the time to unsubscribe from every list that I could, and my spam count dropped down into the low teens per day. You would be surprised how many times you buy something, register for a Web site, fill out a contest form, etc., and you are actually signing up for a whole heap of subscriptions, but you just don't see the opt-out button in the fine print. Most American companies are aware of and compliant with CAN-SPAM (on pain of devastating financial penalties and even jail time).

The more interesting cases are those that I have encountered lately, where the spammer fixates on one particular product (examples include mortgages, restaurant franchises, and even underwear - because I don't know where to buy tighty-whiteys, after all) and sends 10-20 messages per day all from the same (easily blocked) domain name, often taking the time to even make their subject lines seasonally appropriate: "Buy New Underwear for Christmas", "Open a Restaurant Franchise for the Holidays", "Santa brings you a new Mortgage!1!", etc. Once I get bored with the interesting subject lines, I can generally make an Outlook rule to redirect that particular domain to the junk bin.

All in all, between unsubscribing and blocking with rules, only about 20 messages a week survive in the Bulk Mail folder, with several hundred ending up in the instantly-deleted Spam folder.

[QUOTE=henryzz]Do you count as spam anything that you can unsubscribe from?
[/QUOTE]
Anyone should. Any unsolicited advertizing is spam, it makes you to waste time on it. For many spammers, the main goal is to find out if you are a real person. They will send a mail to you, ask you if you eat cheese or not, and then say if you don't want to be asked, then unsubscribe. After you unsubscribe, they will never bother you again. But now they know you are real.

[QUOTE=NBtarheel_33]I have found "unsubscribing", when such a link is available, often truly works as advertised.[/QUOTE]
Indeed. I found out it ALWAYS works as advertized: you will not receive THAT kind of thing for which you unsubscribed, from THAT advertizing house. But they will immediately spread your address to their friends, who will put you in "real persons!" list, because by "unsubscribing", you just proved you exist, and you read your mails. So in days or weeks, you will start receiving other things from other guys, or same things from other guys... etc.

There are bots who generate [email]random@yahoo.com[/email] or @gmail.com email addresses and send crap to them, then collect in a list the dummies who reply (including unsubscribing).

"Unsubscribing" is wrong. Put the sender in the black list (so its messages be moved/ignored/deleted/whatever, this may include playing with the outlook's email rules, if you are still using outlook) and delete the message. The effect is the same as unsubscribing: you will not see any mails from that guy. But you don't give yourself away. And you may go from "20 per week" to "2 per month".

[QUOTE=henryzz;321999]Some of the emails in the images look like subscriptions rather than spam.[/QUOTE]I am responsible for a number of those. They did not require a 'click the link we send you to confirm'.:bump2:

Here is this week's spam report.

:piggie:

Here is this week's spam report.

:piggie:

Here is this week's spam report.

:piggie:

Here is this week's spam report.

:piggie:

Here is this week's spam report.

:piggie:

I just recently acquired my originally requested email account from 15 years ago: chappy at yahoo dot com. And now I'm having buyer's remorse.

I've had the same email for that entire period of time, which is almost back to the stone ages of the interwebs. Before that it was chappy @ socket .net which is a local Missouri dial up provider even today. and before that it was j-something-long-string-of-numbers @ Penthouse forum's "small midwestern college" dot edu.

something long string of numbers because, well, because most of us students knew more about the vagueries of the interwebs than the sysadmin who had been a typing teacher thrust into the responsibility of a new era of technology.

In all the time I've had my current email I've gotten up to a couple dozen spam messages a day, but generally much fewer. And very few unsolicited legitimate but still spam emails. In four days with the new email I'm getting 4-10 an hour.

Where the heck did this email's previous owner "Tessy" Chapman apparently go to get on so many lists?

So I thought about this thread and how we hadn't seen an update in a while. And then I got distracted because my neighbor baked me cupcakes because I collected her mail for a week. And then I couldn't find the thread because I thought it was in the Forum threads. And then I ate a cupcake which was peanut butter icing on dark chocolate cake--delish.

And then I tried to think like Mike. Operation...Ahh here it is.

Here is this week's spam report.

:piggie: