August 14, 2007

  • Spam

    I really hate spam. I really do.

    But what I love *about* spam is being able to critique it without sentiment. For instance:

    Family member() has created Birthday postcard for you at hallmark.com.

    To see your custom Birthday postcard, simply click on the following link:

    http://213.67.13.171/

    Send a FREE greeting card from hallmark.com whenever you want by visiting us at:
    This service is provided and hosted by hallmark.com.

    See, what you're looking at is someone trying to pretend they're hallmark.com, and linking through a URL that doesn't go to the hallmark.com domain.

    The four numbers separated by periods is called a 'dotted quad,' and is what you get when you take a domain name like 'hallmark.com' and figure out which machine it resolves to. For instance, hallmark.com resolves to 72.247.171.78, which is located in Cambridge, MA.

    It turns out you can also do what's called a reverse-lookup to get the domain name for a given dotted quad. 213.67.13.171, to which the spammer links us, turns out to be, h171n2fls34o828.telia.com, which is located in Sweden and is blacklisted by SORBS, appropriately enough. Nowhere near Cambridge or Hallmark, which is why they didn't link directly to hallmark.com.

    I also like the bit about 'Family member().' Yes, my parents are parens.

    I've been getting a proverbial shitload of these 'Your friend has sent you an e-card' spam. Maybe 5 or 6 a day. So if you're a friend or relative or acquaintance or whatever, you're on notice: Don't send me e-cards. I won't look at them. Mostly. This most pathetic one, while being so very pathetic, somehow evaded my anti-spam filter.

Comments (6)

  • I've been getting "A CLASSMATE has sent you an ecard" and "A FRIEND has sent you an ecard"

    since I don't have friends, that's a no-brainer (I kid)

  • I learned something about the internet from this post.

    I understand that this particular piece of spam is a quasi-virus, that can result in the contents of a Microsoft Outlook address book being sent off to some nefarious characters. The virus checker on the windoze machine I use at work doesn't like it.

  • I've had a million of those lately too, so annoying...

  • Huh. I don't think I've gotten that one. I have, however, one the British lottery. Five times!

  • so that is why you have not answered any of my "confessions of true love" e-cards.  back to the drawing board for me!

  • Yeah, those are going around and they supposedly contain a yucky worm or virus of some sort. (But you, O Mac User, probably wouldn't even be affected... LOL.)

    Love the reverse lookup. Those silly Swedes.

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