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Subliminal Spam Using an Animated GIF

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the you-are-getting-sleeeeepy dept.

JohnGrahamCumming writes "Everyone's noticed the recent flood of image spam (including the SpamAssassin developers who are working on an OCR-extension to beat it), but take a look at this spam containing a subliminal message flashed every 17 seconds to try to entice you to buy the stock being pumped. Does this work? Warning: link shows the actual spam; don't blame me if you lose money on this stock!"

10 of 216 comments (clear)

  1. Subliminal messages by personman21 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't work. This supposed message is so obvious it's hard not to laugh.

  2. Well... by Sv-Manowar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seems to me as if the people behind the spam have been reading a few too many articles about subliminal marketing and are just trying their luck. What i'd be more worried about if I was them would be using an animated gif in massive mailing, surely that is going to heavily suck bandwidth (as much as they do have, a lot of resources go in to the mailing and the hardware to power it). If I were them I'd stick with the text plea, I'm far more likely to want to help out the prince of Nigeria than a 1998-style flashing .gif.

    --
    Business Voyeur
  3. Block all Images by telchine · · Score: 3, Insightful

    OCR is a ridiculous solution. It can be easily combatted by spammers in the same way the CAPTCHA images defeat OCR techniques.

    My solution:

    For email addresses that are on spam databases, I block all emails that contain images at the MTA level.

    Anyone who has good reason to be sending me images will know my non spam-infested address.

    1. Re:Block all Images by mkavanagh2 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      CAPTCHA images defeat OCR techniques? To my knowledge most text-image CAPTCHAs don't defeat sophisticated OCR and those that do are hardly likely to be easily readable enough to spam any but the most gullible to any effect.

  4. Not subliminal! by Glock27 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I can clearly see the words flash when the .gif animates.

    Therefore, it's not subliminal, since the flashed frame is supposed to be imperceptible to the conscious mind.

    --
    Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
    Score: -1 100% Flamebait
  5. Sad Situation by NaCh0 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Email spam has turned into an arms race of who can outrun the spam assassin developers. Will flash email be the next big thing? I sure hope not.

    Really, the best thing I ever did in my email client was to turn off image loading.

    --
    Arizona Web Design

  6. Re:Nope. by Curmudgeonlyoldbloke · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Nah - it's just someone " 'aving a larf " and trying to make their spam stand out for a split-second among all the other spam.

    It worked though - even though the original article is slashdotted all of the images have been reproduced here. The spammers must be laughing all the way to the bank...

  7. Most successful ever by dcapel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That piece of spam is possibly the most cost-effective individual piece of spam ever: the spammer sent it to one person and gets 25000+ views of it instead.

    --
    DYWYPI?
  8. Re:Also Doesn't Work (Wikipedia) by FhnuZoag · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I suspect it was done for the science programme Tommorrow's World. (Pretty cool thing giving weekly news of scientific/technological developments, now sadly deceased)

    I don't buy the study, though. The geographical split is likely very significant here. There's good evidence that people decide these things based on what they feel at the time, and there's also good evidence showing that people's self-statements of happiness are influenced by where they live. Without a control group, the results are pretty meaningless.

  9. Re:Nope. by JediLow · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Never underestimate the stupidity of people.