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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!"

3 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. 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