Saturday, December 30, 2006

Spam Gets All Sophisticated

It goes without saying that a world of knowledgeable internet users would be the end of spam, simply because responding to spam is idiotic. So, turn idiots into people with half a brain, and spam would die. Then spammers would have to find a new line of work. Maybe the spammers would die, too. But all that's wishful thinking at the moment. People are still stupid, and spammers are becoming more sophisticated.

Here's how they're delivering spam that evades spam-filters. Spam-filters stop spam typically by identifying spammy words and spammy links. So how are the spammers getting around that? By sending their spam-messages as images rather than text. (See accompanying graphic as an example.) These images are designed even to evade optical character recognition (OCR), where a filter "reads" the text from the image, by adding textured backgrounds, different fonts in different colors, etc. The human brain, which is quite good at pattern recognition, can easily decipher the message, while computers struggle mightily to understand what all the fuss is about.

Another spam scam that, unbelievably, gets some idiots to bite, is the pump-and-dump penny stock scheme. The spammers will buy shares in some stock nobody's ever heard of, send out millions of emails telling people how great that stock is, then, when the idiots have swallowed the bait and actually purchased shares, the spammers sell for a 5%-6% gain. Obviously the idiots lose on the deal. One can only hope that they learn their lesson the first time and never repeat their idiocy, but there seems to be a new crop of idiots coming up at any given time.

So kids, what's the moral of this story? Simple. Shoot all idiots on sight!*

*The author is not really advocating shooting anyone. He means this only as a satirical diatribe against idiots who respond to spam. He does not remember ever meeting any of these idiots in real life, and wonders what they look like. Would he recognize one if he saw one? He does not know. In any case, there is no shooting allowed. Unless an idiot breaks into your house and tries to steal your computer. Then all bets are off.