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Milestones in the Annals of Junkmail
fdc writes: "Web pages are a great source of postal
addresses for direct mailers. Judging by some of the
addresses we've seen recently, it's evident that the data is
harvested not by humans, but by computer programs that scan web
pages for names and addresses. Several weeks ago we (the
Kermit
Project at
Columbia University)
announced a new release of our Kermit 95
communication software for Windows -- SSH, secure FTP, etc; cousin
of C-Kermit
for Unix (search Freshmeat). Since this was a major release, we
chose a new icon for it: the Columbia
crown. A web page
explained that this is the emblem of Columbia University: the
crown of King George the II of England (1727-1760), who founded
Columbia in 1754. JUST ONE WEEK LATER guess who received a postcard from
Dell."
Thou art getting a Dell!
---
I'm tired of waltzing for pancakes. -- Gwen Mezzrow
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
But that's what I always write when asked. Poor dudes at the postal services.
You should be glad that AI has come this far. For an intelligent agent to be able to harvest addresses by clicking through web pages, and then mailing out postcards is truly an advancement of the technology.
Remember, there are good points to everything, even things like this which under normal circumstances could be described as "alienating our rights."
It would be very easy to interpret such simple encoding with a bot. I would think that such bots already exist that filter not only that but removing NOSPAM from e-mail addresses which seems to be another popular attempt at keeping a public e-mail address semi-private.
There are no clear King George + address on the web-page. This just looks like a prank database addition by someone at Dell on a slow day (probably a Kermit user, tho.)
Really, contact Dell and ask for an explanation. I think we'd all love to hear what kind of lame excuse they try to come up with in order to avoid admitting that they harvest spammable addreses from the net :)
Just nitpicking...
Why would direct mail companies choose to use automated programs like this?
Let's look at what these programs give you:
1. A ton of results.
2. 80%(and probably a whole lot more, I'm just being conservative) of those results are probably false due to all those AOL member pages that haven't been updated in years, people who put up fake info, info that is out of date, etc.
Wouldn't this be bad for the direct mail companies? Clients that hire them want to reach as many real people as possible. The direct mail companies that use the methods mentioned in this story can never provide their clients with what they want, the ability to reach real consumers.
The Direct mail companies probably know this and either, are planning on changing it or don't care and are just interested in spamming as many people, real or not, as possible.
Direct mail companies interested in doing what they promise should think about the way they collect information in order to provide better service if they are a real company not just looking to spam everyone alive, or dead in this case.
Companies like Dell don't harvest addressess. They deal with direct marketing companies who either do the harvesting, or who buy large lists from email addressess from companies who swear up and down that they lists contain only people who asked to recieve information about this sort of thing (whatever this sort of thing may be).
Oh geez...the owner of somebody@something.com is gonna be pissed!
Kickstart
That was (and still technically is) the respectful version. The monarch would reply using "thou".
Wow. I actually learned something useful out of my English course...
are incompatible...
Dude, you're going to hell!
Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so. --Ford Prefect
I would just love to throw out a page with addresses like:
Zephram Cochrane
c/o Phoenix Research Institute
186000 Miles Avenue
Central, Montana 01701
Seven Nine
2349 Tendara Street
Unimatrix, CA 79301
John Kelly
2032 Gravaton Ave.
Mars, NC 02376
Tobin Dax
2135 Bajor Parkway
Symbiant, UT 02230
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
Isn't it a Federal felony to read the post card if you're not King Geoge? Never mind scanning and posting someone else's mail on the web without their permission! :)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think it's the owner of someone (at) somewhere.com posts to bugtraq.
.test .example .invalid .localhost
example.com
example.net
example.org
Are the RFC 2606 eserved domains you should use in examples, such as the parent post.
Also reserved are the TLDs:
I don't know if it's been updated since, but they don't mention the common "localhost.localdomain" that I see a lot. I guess it really doesn't matter too much, except for trash traffic to the root name servers if someone messes it up.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
That is a little different. The data you received clearly had a common structure as it was just retrieved from a database and placed into a template.
Actually analysing language is a much more difficult task. Just look at the very imperfect quality of language translation tools on Google and Altavista to see just how hard it is.
The person responsible for this spam has just been sacked...
The person repsonsible for the person responsible for this spam has just be sacked...
Or something thereabouts! Sorry MP.
-Ben
I sent this letter to the kermit project address. Maybe someone here can answer it for me:
:)
--Begin--
Computers are stupid and would not be able to aggregate a name on one page to a snailmail address on another without human help, yet I can't find where King George and this address were listed near each other. Any ideas from which page this name and address were gleaned?
thx
very funny otherwise
I said: "That [you] was (and still technically is) the respectful version."
You said: "The familiar version of "you" in Middle/Early Modern language is "thou." "
Aren't we saying the same thing?
No, the point was that postal addresses (not email) addresses were being picked up, and in a fairly sophisticated manner. I believe the Web page in question is http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/k95.html which contains our postal address (near the bottom) and also mentions King George II (near the top). The address harvester recognized the postal address (no big accomplishment) but also picked out "King George II" as a name. Which I suppose it could be!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Because that is all that fool Geordie could read.
Stands Scotland where it did?
If you don't get it read up some history.
It seems much more likely that someone on the team was registering for something somewhere and, wanding to avoid stupid spam, put in the clever King persona instead.
Promptly forgotten, it was a surprise when Dell, seemingly unrelated to the registration account, sends email to that profile.
More than likely someone on your team remembers it now, but finds the alternative 'harvesting' explanation so funny he's keeping quiet.
Kevin Fox
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You dirty colonist rabble with your General Washingham. The Quartering Act stands.
uses prison labor to make their computers?
Dude, you're gettin' a cell.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
For me, postal spam it's not as bad as email, because it doesn't cost you in disk space or bandwidth.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
The Devil
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
Jack Fuck-me-in-the-ass Valenti
MPAA
15503 Ventura Boulevard
Encino, CA 91436
Just to start off with a few.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
This isn't language translation. All they have to do is look for a known city, followed by a known state abbreviation. The last two lines will be the address. And to make sure there's no junk data, they can simply verify that the address exists.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
I actually find it more irritating when people blatantly label others as 'pseudo-intellectuals' for using terms they personally don't like.
Since your post is ambiguous, are you against the term 'Occam's Razor' or the underlying principle of complexity theory? Can you elaborate why?
Thanks much,
Kevin Fox
He was Hanoverian....
Geck, erhalten Sie ein Dell!
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Actually you are wrong. There is nothing wrong with the principle, but what you are irritated by, is that you CAN'T SEE what seems to be a simpler explanation. Either ask, or flame the supposition that it is simpler. Don't blame anything on Good Ol' Occam, or the invocation of it. It's good that people are invoking it, and good that they can disagree with you.
It found the name "King George II" somewhere else in the page, that's why. I assume "George" is what triggered it (searching for common names in a database, probably).
I would think that such bots already exist that filter not only that but removing NOSPAM from e-mail addresses
That's why my next email address will actually be something like "myname.NOSPAM@whatever.com". Somehow we must continue to prove that we're smarter than the machines! ha ha
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
I don't know how widely kermit is used, but I go to Columbia, and if any of the project members are reading this:
Quit trying to redo the interface! The old one worked fine and looked good in black and white. The new one is too small to read and has no reason for existing.
But other than that, it's the best print management software I've come across, so good job on the free advertising and all that.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
I usually tell all those sites to send to joe@aol.com
I wonder who that poor sucker is.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
I usually tell all those sites to send to joe@aol.com. I wonder who that poor sucker is
It's self-centered assholes like you that forced me to stop using jay@aol.com after nine years. My misdirected mailing list subscriptions were far more problematic than my spam load. You don't want to get e-mail, so you send it to someone else instead? Do you also dump your trash on your neighbor's lawn?
If you don't want to get spammed by e-commerce sites and the like, use "me@privacy.net". That sends an auto-response for every e-mail, telling the merchant that they should ask permission before assuming you want to be added to a mailing list. If the site tells you that is already used, try adding a single digit, e.g. me3@privacy.net.
I was kidding, I usually give something@localhost.localdomain
I also wonder what the data suggesting I am a 95 year old female government employee making less than $25,000 a year goes to.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
How sad the US post has become. My wife has to dig through piles of junk to get the few bills we must mail. Fliers of all descriptions, Magverts, garbage small and large, even a page from the post office listing all the junk mail. Is it any wonder that real mail is trown away at home, get's delivered to the wrong house by the postman, or just plain lost in all the crap? It's inconvienent and disgusting. We all pay for those piles of junk, even if the company buying the useless adverts goes out of business - your insurance premiums will cover parts of it, higher retail prices cover other parts and your postal stamps will subsidise the rest. It's not a fear of anthrax that makes me wash my hands after getting the mail, it's all that nasty ink that comes off onto my hands. Contamination by touch is the lowest of the post office's indignities.
So I use the mail less, so prices of stamps go up, so the post office sells more junk mail, so I use the mail less .... See a patern?
When did the post office get into junk mail anyway?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yes, I was also occasionally the victim of a dictionary attack, as well as plain old address harvesting, but much more common was someone else named Jay (or someone whose initials were J) entering "jay@aol.com" as his e-mail address when signing up for a web site. It was very clear when the latter occurred - it was usually a legitimate mailing list that simply didn't use verified opt-in, or an e-commerce site that automatically added customers to their "hot products" newsletter.
Oddly, another common source of mail was an AOL member named Jay typing "Jay" into the CC field. This was less of a problem after the field label was changed from "CC to "Copy To" a few versions ago. It seems that, in the post-carbon-paper era, people don't always know what "CC" stands for. The first box is "To", so the second one must mean "From"!
> if we don't have trees, we don't live, and we're dead, and that's bad
<joke>But at least there'd be no more spam...</joke>
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
> . I would probaly call him the shrubbery.
Sir is more appropriate for a knight. Especially a Knight that says "Ni".
> Give me back my karma numbers, damnit.
Amen to that. (Yes, I know it's "Excellent" - but how Excellent?)
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.