Those of you whose spam filters work as badly as mine are no doubt familiar with the genre of 419 spam emails. You know the thing, "Dear Respected Sir. I am the Minister for Trade of Nigeria, and I wish to embezzle a BILLION dollars AMERICAN..." One element of these that you occasionally see is "supporting evidence" - the writer tries to give the impression the email is legitimate by linking to an entirely respectable but irrelevant news story which proves the person they're claiming to be actually exists, in the hope that this will make the whole thing seem legit.
Last month, I got one purporting to be from Maria das Neves, the former Prime Minister of São Tomé and Principe. What immediately caught my attention, as I went to hit delete, was that it linked not to a newspaper article about her, but the Wikipedia article (which it referred to as "my profile")
This was on 15th December. And sure enough, if we look at the December statistics for that page, we find that about four hundred people followed the link over a couple of days: http://stats.grok.se/en/200811/Maria_das_Neves
There's a second, smaller, spike at the end of the month; a second run? If we look back there's also one around November 24th, and one yesterday (January 17th).
An entirely unexpected application of stats.grok.se, there!
On a more relevant content note, it seems most of these "waves" led people to add warnings about it to the article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maria_das_Neves&diff=258161984... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maria_das_Neves&diff=260979984... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maria_das_Neves&diff=264791843...
...so the "you can edit" idea must be getting fairly apparent even among people who read spam :-)
On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 4:08 PM, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
<snip spam details>
This was on 15th December. And sure enough, if we look at the December statistics for that page, we find that about four hundred people followed the link over a couple of days: http://stats.grok.se/en/200811/Maria_das_Neves
There's a second, smaller, spike at the end of the month; a second run? If we look back there's also one around November 24th, and one yesterday (January 17th).
An entirely unexpected application of stats.grok.se, there!
<snip>
Indeed! Almost as unexpected as the application to track how many people view deleted revisions of a deleted page. Just go to a deleted page and plug the URL of the "viewdeleted" version for the page in question into the stats.grok.se thingy. If non-admins can't work out the URL, ask around and it should be simple to construct.
Carcharoth
You have Gmail and your spam filter works badly? Hm, strange.
-- Alvaro
On 18-01-2009, at 13:08, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Those of you whose spam filters work as badly as mine are no doubt familiar with the genre of 419 spam emails. You know the thing, "Dear Respected Sir. I am the Minister for Trade of Nigeria, and I wish to embezzle a BILLION dollars AMERICAN..." One element of these that you occasionally see is "supporting evidence" - the writer tries to give the impression the email is legitimate by linking to an entirely respectable but irrelevant news story which proves the person they're claiming to be actually exists, in the hope that this will make the whole thing seem legit.
Last month, I got one purporting to be from Maria das Neves, the former Prime Minister of São Tomé and Principe. What immediately caught my attention, as I went to hit delete, was that it linked not to a newspaper article about her, but the Wikipedia article (which it referred to as "my profile")
This was on 15th December. And sure enough, if we look at the December statistics for that page, we find that about four hundred people followed the link over a couple of days: http://stats.grok.se/en/200811/Maria_das_Neves
There's a second, smaller, spike at the end of the month; a second run? If we look back there's also one around November 24th, and one yesterday (January 17th).
An entirely unexpected application of stats.grok.se, there!
On a more relevant content note, it seems most of these "waves" led people to add warnings about it to the article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maria_das_Neves&diff=258161984... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maria_das_Neves&diff=260979984... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maria_das_Neves&diff=264791843...
...so the "you can edit" idea must be getting fairly apparent even among people who read spam :-)
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I used hotmail once, for a throwaway account on a mailing list that I did not want to be associated with. Making it reject spam from MicroSoft was doable at the time, and it was still an insurmountable pain to use with Lynx. Spam is probably on side-bars there, now. Hint for moderators: Learn how to set up an account from your ISP. All communication involves risk.
"Alvaro García" alvareo@gmail.com wrote in message news:3911BC3C-D99B-4874-B0C9-97A4BC80BD65@gmail.com...
You have Gmail and your spam filter works badly? Hm, strange.
-- Alvaro
On 18-01-2009, at 13:08, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Those of you whose spam filters work as badly as mine are no doubt familiar with the genre of 419 spam emails. You know the thing, "Dear Respected Sir. I am the Minister for Trade of Nigeria, and I wish to embezzle a BILLION dollars AMERICAN..." One element of these that you occasionally see is "supporting evidence" - the writer tries to give the impression the email is legitimate by linking to an entirely respectable but irrelevant news story which proves the person they're claiming to be actually exists, in the hope that this will make the whole thing seem legit.
Last month, I got one purporting to be from Maria das Neves, the former Prime Minister of São Tomé and Principe. What immediately caught my attention, as I went to hit delete, was that it linked not to a newspaper article about her, but the Wikipedia article (which it referred to as "my profile")
This was on 15th December. And sure enough, if we look at the December statistics for that page, we find that about four hundred people followed the link over a couple of days: http://stats.grok.se/en/200811/Maria_das_Neves
There's a second, smaller, spike at the end of the month; a second run? If we look back there's also one around November 24th, and one yesterday (January 17th).
An entirely unexpected application of stats.grok.se, there!
On a more relevant content note, it seems most of these "waves" led people to add warnings about it to the article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maria_das_Neves&diff=258161984... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maria_das_Neves&diff=260979984... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maria_das_Neves&diff=264791843...
...so the "you can edit" idea must be getting fairly apparent even among people who read spam :-)
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
That's the first time I've seen "Microsoft" written in CamelCase.
-- Alvaro
On 25-01-2009, at 20:47, "brewhaha%40edmc.net" brewhaha@edmc.net wrote:
I used hotmail once, for a throwaway account on a mailing list that I did not want to be associated with. Making it reject spam from MicroSoft was doable at the time, and it was still an insurmountable pain to use with Lynx. Spam is probably on side-bars there, now. Hint for moderators: Learn how to set up an account from your ISP. All communication involves risk.
"Alvaro García" alvareo@gmail.com wrote in message news:3911BC3C-D99B-4874-B0C9-97A4BC80BD65@gmail.com...
You have Gmail and your spam filter works badly? Hm, strange.
-- Alvaro
On 18-01-2009, at 13:08, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Those of you whose spam filters work as badly as mine are no doubt familiar with the genre of 419 spam emails. You know the thing, "Dear Respected Sir. I am the Minister for Trade of Nigeria, and I wish to embezzle a BILLION dollars AMERICAN..." One element of these that you occasionally see is "supporting evidence" - the writer tries to give the impression the email is legitimate by linking to an entirely respectable but irrelevant news story which proves the person they're claiming to be actually exists, in the hope that this will make the whole thing seem legit.
Last month, I got one purporting to be from Maria das Neves, the former Prime Minister of São Tomé and Principe. What immediately caught my attention, as I went to hit delete, was that it linked not to a newspaper article about her, but the Wikipedia article (which it referred to as "my profile")
This was on 15th December. And sure enough, if we look at the December statistics for that page, we find that about four hundred people followed the link over a couple of days: http://stats.grok.se/en/200811/Maria_das_Neves
There's a second, smaller, spike at the end of the month; a second run? If we look back there's also one around November 24th, and one yesterday (January 17th).
An entirely unexpected application of stats.grok.se, there!
On a more relevant content note, it seems most of these "waves" led people to add warnings about it to the article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maria_das_Neves&diff=258161984... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maria_das_Neves&diff=260979984... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maria_das_Neves&diff=264791843...
...so the "you can edit" idea must be getting fairly apparent even among people who read spam :-)
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
"Andrew Gray" shimgray@gmail.com wrote in message news:f3fedb0d0901180808r2f6da699g2d5d4d557ebf7b25@mail.gmail.com... You know the thing, "Dear Respected Sir. I am the Minister for Trade of Nigeria, and I wish to embezzle a BILLION dollars AMERICAN..."
Money Laundering is a more applicable term. I hav seen job offers that do not spell out how much I stand to get. The only unifying characteristic of fraud in that vein is that it asks for more personal information to open phone channels, to begin with, plus it never orijinates from a likely domain. My ISP either drops e-mail from IP#s that mask their domain name or fills that information in. The crazy thing is that you could open a phone channel with me from looking at my website, so if someone asks for it in e-mail, then I know that the scammer does not know a thing about me. I get more spam on Thursday, when scammers can hope to keep their account open until Monday. I identify fraud with [phish] -- same category as notes from banks that are not signed or that I do not deal with.