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Subliminal Spam Using an Animated GIF

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. Re:Subliminal messages by rritterson · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you are aware of the message, it's not subliminal--it's just plain liminal.

    There is a lot of subliminal messages in advertising, especially on TV. Given our consumerist culture, i'd say it's working fairly well.

    --
    -Ryan
    AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
  2. A little history is in order here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When I was in college in the sixty's I attended a talk on subliminal advertising and there were some rather interesting points. First, advertisers determined the speed at which it worked, then crossed the outstretched palms of their coin-operated congressmen to define a much faster speed as "subliminal," thus clearing the legal field. Next they performed a major experiment. At that time (maybe still, I don't watch the boob tube at all) Pillsbury had an ad where a cartoon "Dough Boy" would jump out of a roll of biscuits when it was hit on a table edge and proclaim the "wonderfullness" of the product. A subliminal spot of a pregnant woman was placed just before Dough Boy jumped out . . . and sales soared. There was also a major flap about some "scientist" who supposedly faked his data on subliminal advertising, which played right into the advertisers hands, of course, so who knows what to believe?

    BillyDoc

  3. You people are stupid. ( solution to SPAM ) by siyavash · · Score: 1, Interesting

    SPAM ? I haven't seen "SPAM" for over 6 years now. While you stupid morons keep fighting to get rid of it, I have managed to find the perfect solution. and I mean this is 100% secure. ( I have copyright on this by the way ).

    See, an email is like opening your door in a city, any hobo can just open the door and look inside your home. My solution is to create different doors for every person out there.

    How ?

    With email aliases.

    You can't do this with gmail or whatever. You need to first buy your own domain where you are able to create *@domain.com aliases.

    Now, once you have that, everytime you publish your email somewhere you create an alias for that "somewhere". For example, if you want to give your email to slashdot, you create an alias "slashdot" and you email will be "slashdot@mydomain.com". Then, if you want to give away you email to amazon, you do "amazon@mydomain.com"... etc.

    See my point ?

    This way, once you start getting SPAM, you know for sure, 100% WHERE the SPAM is comming from and which one of your aliases are infected.

    All you need to do is to just close that alias. and *poof*, no more SPAM from there. All the other aliases are safe and you won't have to worry about losing emails.

    and if wanna put your email on a website ? Use a mailform.

    I'm amazed that google or microsoft have not come up with such solution, one could have mygmailaccount.alias.@gmail.com for example to give away, this way one would be able to shut that alias down once it gets SPAM infected.

    Now, while you waste your CPU and TIME on getting rid of SPAM, I'll enjoy a 100% SPAM free email experience without tons of junk "filter" applications.

    The above solution is THE ONLY way to get rid of SPAM. If you are not already doing it, DO IT NOW. If you don't want to do it, then I have some news for you :

    You sir, are a moron! :)