...but as I always do when spam stories come around, please let me pimp two of my favorite anti-spam projects. First is Unsolicited Commando. It's a happy little Java app that spends its days filling out information forms on spamvertised sites with legitimate looking (yet completely bogus) personal information. Run it on your system and help make mortgage spams more useless and expensive! Secondly, let me point you towards a spam vampire page. It's IE only for now, but the source is available and hopefully it'll be functional in other browsers soon. The page sits and reloads graphics from spam sites over and over again to burn up their bandwidth - just like Slashdot, but put to a good cause. Load it up and fight dirty just like Sanford and his bottom-feeding friends!
The porn industry took in (according to a pretty conservative Forbes article) around two *billion* dollars last year. I'm guessing that a whole lot of "good, Christian America" secretly wants (and secretly votes) to *keep* porn legal.
I think what they mean is that the net is now utterly and completely commonplace. Ten years ago you could tell someone "I can chat with Norway!" and they wouldn't believe you, but now you say "I'm on the net!" and it's as exciting as saying "I own a couch!"
And in the interviews and press he did leading up to Jay and Silent Bob he stressed that fact *repeatedly*. I remember him saying on several occasions that he expected the film to completely tank because he "made it for (himself) and the twelve people who obsess over all the minutiae in (his) other movies."
> it'd be like someone from London speaking cockney rhyming slang and expecting that to be understood
Heh. Cockney rhyming tech support.
"What? No, no, I don't *have* a Mac, I have a PC! What? NO! I have *one* broken *Windows* computer! Why do you keep talking about Apples in pairs? And no, I do *not* think this should be lemon squeezy! Give me your manager! No, dammit! Not the *governor!* GAAAAAH!"/sound of quiet sobbing in the background.
...allow me to pimp two of my favorite projects.
First up is the Unsolicited Commando project. It's a little java app that spends its day quietly and merrily filling out forms on spamvertised websites with completely bogus - and yet totally real looking - data. It's especially effective against - surprise! - mortgage/refinance spammers, which seems to be the specialty of the dirtbag mentioned in the article. Go check it out, and the source code is available just in case you think something fishy is going on.
The second page I'd like to point you to is here. It's a 'Lad Vampire' antispam page that also targets spamvertised websites, but in a different way. The page links to individual images on the sites and constantly reloads them without caching, thereby burning up the spammers' bandwidth and driving them out of business (or at least costing them some money and forcing them to sell their children on the black market). Be forewarned that the page has no help, no documentation, and *only* works in IE, so don't yell at me about that. The source code is available for that as well, so here's hoping someone can make it more usable in Moz, Opera, ThunderFireBunnyChicken, or whatever browser is your fave.
Face it, 99% of the digital cameras out there are sold for the recording of the owners' bedroom adventures. Nobody's going to pick one of these cameras up when they realize that Betty Lou Bluehair down at the photo counter at Wal-Mart will get to see them rubbing up against some fat guy in a squirrel suit he had shipped over from Japan.
"No! I swear I've been framed! I would *never* send out spam for my site. I'm totally legit! We here at xhegfr.24873xx.pills4u.com are a 100% above-board business!"
I hereby announce my line of high-quality t-shirts commemorating what will go down in history as a moment of sheer perfection in geekdom. The name, the post, the event... all so perfect for the occasion. Truly a singular moment, and we should all be proud to have been here.
The shirts will be available in S, M, L, XL, XXL, and Admin.
It's for mortgage spammers and not phishers, but I'm a fan of the Unsolicited Commando project. It's a little Java app that spends its day filling out mortgage applications on spamvertised sites with completely believable - but totally bogus - personal data. The source is available so perhaps a clever person could randomly generate credit card numbers and adapt the program to attack phish sites.
And once again I've left out an important point... It's not my site. I can't change anything about it. It's a quick and dirty page thrown up by a SpamCop user for his use and anyone else who wants to run it. He created it and announced it in the SpamCop forums but it was never meant for the general public, hence the quick-and-dirtiness and total lack of documentation. I should have made that clearer, mea culpa.
He seems like a nice guy, so if you'd like to go here and drop him a line then he'd probably be happy to take any suggestions you have.
> Remember, I think like a Mac user
Hmm... I have to buy a Powerbook for school. Does that mean I should start stomping and shouting now to get in practice?;)
"Things just haven't been the same since Pat Metheny screwed everything up," said Myron Blakey of the 'That's Not Jazz, That's Just Noise!' chapter located in Akron, Ohio.
I agree completely. The source code is out there somewhere, so I'm sure someone smarter than I am could make it MozFireOperaFox friendly. I think I'll drop a note to HillsCap in the SpamCop.net forums and see what he thinks. (This particular vampire page is his.)
What browser are you running? At this point the vampire pages only seem to work in IE and (maybe) Konqueror. Are you getting a blue background and that's it, or blue with the (x) marks for the broken images?
In addition to all the other things I forgot to mention in my original post, include the Unsolicited Commando project. It's a little java program that quietly sends bogus data to spamvertised sites that require you to fill out personal info to get mortgage refinance and whatnot. Source code is available for those who want to see how it works.
It's a "Lad Vampire" site. Some anonymous person coded the first one and used it to attack fake banks created online by 419 scammers and escrow cheats. "Artists Against 419" are still running one and organize flashmobs every once in a while to get hundreds of people using them all at once. The page links to just the images on spamvertised websites and reloads them over and over without caching, which sends the hosting costs of the server through the roof. Before long the site gets shut down for good and the spammer owes for some serious bandwidth costs. In cases where the sites are being served by zombied cable boxes then the ISP at least gets alerted to the problem and closes the user 'til their box is disinfected. The speed option allows you to change the reload speed depending on your bandwith. (Admins with access to fat pipes always get a grin out of opening it up all the way.)
> Thanks for wasting my time, I guess.
No problem. You seem like someone who doesn't feel complete without something to be angry about.
Crush those sites? A sound idea. Start here. It's a Spam Vampire site set up by one of the more vicious anti-spammers I've ever seen in action. Non-caching, image-reaping, website-burning, bandwith-sucking action, all with a scorecard and a throttle. Now if we can just get this modded up so that a few thousand people are all playing at the same time...
Slashdot Mirror
...but as I always do when spam stories come around, please let me pimp two of my favorite anti-spam projects. First is Unsolicited Commando. It's a happy little Java app that spends its days filling out information forms on spamvertised sites with legitimate looking (yet completely bogus) personal information. Run it on your system and help make mortgage spams more useless and expensive! Secondly, let me point you towards a spam vampire page. It's IE only for now, but the source is available and hopefully it'll be functional in other browsers soon. The page sits and reloads graphics from spam sites over and over again to burn up their bandwidth - just like Slashdot, but put to a good cause. Load it up and fight dirty just like Sanford and his bottom-feeding friends!
The porn industry took in (according to a pretty conservative Forbes article) around two *billion* dollars last year. I'm guessing that a whole lot of "good, Christian America" secretly wants (and secretly votes) to *keep* porn legal.
Too much Calvin & Hobbes, I suppose.
Don't be silly - they never actually told the contractors that it was a *Death* star.
"Hey, Frank... what in the heck *is* this thing we're building, anyway?"
"They told me that once we're done laying down the linoleum the whole outside of this thing gets fitted with reflective tile."
"You mean...?"
"Yep. Biggest self-sufficient disco ball in the universe!"
"But what for?"
"They gave me a card - here."
"'Our mission - riding the solar wind and spreading the good news and intergalactic funk from event horizon to event horizon.'"
"Yeah, isn't that just the wierdest?"
"Wait, there's more... 'D.V. and The Black Hole Sunshine Band - The Best Bang Since the Big One'. Where have I heard that before?"
"Dunno, Charlie, but I've got a *bad* feeling about this..."
I think what they mean is that the net is now utterly and completely commonplace. Ten years ago you could tell someone "I can chat with Norway!" and they wouldn't believe you, but now you say "I'm on the net!" and it's as exciting as saying "I own a couch!"
And in the interviews and press he did leading up to Jay and Silent Bob he stressed that fact *repeatedly*. I remember him saying on several occasions that he expected the film to completely tank because he "made it for (himself) and the twelve people who obsess over all the minutiae in (his) other movies."
> it'd be like someone from London speaking cockney rhyming slang and expecting that to be understood
/sound of quiet sobbing in the background.
Heh. Cockney rhyming tech support.
"What? No, no, I don't *have* a Mac, I have a PC! What? NO! I have *one* broken *Windows* computer! Why do you keep talking about Apples in pairs? And no, I do *not* think this should be lemon squeezy! Give me your manager! No, dammit! Not the *governor!* GAAAAAH!"
Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Apostrophe!
Sieg Hyphen!
Punctuation uber alles!
...allow me to pimp two of my favorite projects. First up is the Unsolicited Commando project. It's a little java app that spends its day quietly and merrily filling out forms on spamvertised websites with completely bogus - and yet totally real looking - data. It's especially effective against - surprise! - mortgage/refinance spammers, which seems to be the specialty of the dirtbag mentioned in the article. Go check it out, and the source code is available just in case you think something fishy is going on.
The second page I'd like to point you to is here. It's a 'Lad Vampire' antispam page that also targets spamvertised websites, but in a different way. The page links to individual images on the sites and constantly reloads them without caching, thereby burning up the spammers' bandwidth and driving them out of business (or at least costing them some money and forcing them to sell their children on the black market). Be forewarned that the page has no help, no documentation, and *only* works in IE, so don't yell at me about that. The source code is available for that as well, so here's hoping someone can make it more usable in Moz, Opera, ThunderFireBunnyChicken, or whatever browser is your fave.
Face it, 99% of the digital cameras out there are sold for the recording of the owners' bedroom adventures. Nobody's going to pick one of these cameras up when they realize that Betty Lou Bluehair down at the photo counter at Wal-Mart will get to see them rubbing up against some fat guy in a squirrel suit he had shipped over from Japan.
"No! I swear I've been framed! I would *never* send out spam for my site. I'm totally legit! We here at xhegfr.24873xx.pills4u.com are a 100% above-board business!"
Just to beat the rush...
In Soviet Russia, it gets YOU!
I hereby announce my line of high-quality t-shirts commemorating what will go down in history as a moment of sheer perfection in geekdom. The name, the post, the event... all so perfect for the occasion. Truly a singular moment, and we should all be proud to have been here.
The shirts will be available in S, M, L, XL, XXL, and Admin.
Babylon 5 decals are optional.
It's for mortgage spammers and not phishers, but I'm a fan of the Unsolicited Commando project. It's a little Java app that spends its day filling out mortgage applications on spamvertised sites with completely believable - but totally bogus - personal data. The source is available so perhaps a clever person could randomly generate credit card numbers and adapt the program to attack phish sites.
And you should. Same for the "i-" and "cyber-" prefixes.
And anyone who markets an "extreme" product should simply be taken out and shot.
And once again I've left out an important point... It's not my site. I can't change anything about it. It's a quick and dirty page thrown up by a SpamCop user for his use and anyone else who wants to run it. He created it and announced it in the SpamCop forums but it was never meant for the general public, hence the quick-and-dirtiness and total lack of documentation. I should have made that clearer, mea culpa. He seems like a nice guy, so if you'd like to go here and drop him a line then he'd probably be happy to take any suggestions you have. ;)
> Remember, I think like a Mac user
Hmm... I have to buy a Powerbook for school. Does that mean I should start stomping and shouting now to get in practice?
...Purists Everywhere Rejoice.
"Things just haven't been the same since Pat Metheny screwed everything up," said Myron Blakey of the 'That's Not Jazz, That's Just Noise!' chapter located in Akron, Ohio.
I agree completely. The source code is out there somewhere, so I'm sure someone smarter than I am could make it MozFireOperaFox friendly. I think I'll drop a note to HillsCap in the SpamCop.net forums and see what he thinks. (This particular vampire page is his.)
What browser are you running? At this point the vampire pages only seem to work in IE and (maybe) Konqueror. Are you getting a blue background and that's it, or blue with the (x) marks for the broken images?
In addition to all the other things I forgot to mention in my original post, include the Unsolicited Commando project. It's a little java program that quietly sends bogus data to spamvertised sites that require you to fill out personal info to get mortgage refinance and whatnot. Source code is available for those who want to see how it works.
> What the hell are you linking us to?
It's a "Lad Vampire" site. Some anonymous person coded the first one and used it to attack fake banks created online by 419 scammers and escrow cheats. "Artists Against 419" are still running one and organize flashmobs every once in a while to get hundreds of people using them all at once. The page links to just the images on spamvertised websites and reloads them over and over without caching, which sends the hosting costs of the server through the roof. Before long the site gets shut down for good and the spammer owes for some serious bandwidth costs. In cases where the sites are being served by zombied cable boxes then the ISP at least gets alerted to the problem and closes the user 'til their box is disinfected. The speed option allows you to change the reload speed depending on your bandwith. (Admins with access to fat pipes always get a grin out of opening it up all the way.)
> Thanks for wasting my time, I guess.
No problem. You seem like someone who doesn't feel complete without something to be angry about.
The evil chortle seems to have paid off there. I've *never* seen that page drop dead like that! What kind of speed were you getting?
It doesn't work under Firefox, either. I completely forgot to mention that. If it weren't for that site I'd never use IE at all...
Crush those sites? A sound idea. Start here. It's a Spam Vampire site set up by one of the more vicious anti-spammers I've ever seen in action. Non-caching, image-reaping, website-burning, bandwith-sucking action, all with a scorecard and a throttle. Now if we can just get this modded up so that a few thousand people are all playing at the same time...