[ILUG] anti-spam thing...

[Colm MacCarthaigh]

On Sat, Jan 05, 2002 at 12:14:54AM +0000, Gavin McCullagh wrote:
> > Some do actually have working URLs, and some have 
> > "Phone This Number/Write This Address". I've seen very few spams that
> > have absolutely no purpose whatsover other than irritant value.
> 
> Well, other than the type sent by friends which usually have seven matches
> to (Fwd|fwd|FWD) in the subject and maybe
> 
> * A Real Virus Warning From Microsoft!!
> * A happy poem which must be fowraded to 20 friends in order for something
> cool to happen.
> * we must send this on cos (Microsoft|IBM|misc other) will put $1 in
> the fund for saving some poor child for every 10 emails sent
> * A lovely new Screen Saver!
> * Miscellaneous other win32 executable attachment

what people overlook is that such spam does have one very usefull
function. It is a both very accurate measure of distributed stupidity
(a notoriusly difficult quanity to measure) and of excessive idiocy
in individuals (easy to measure, but spam aids in the statitistical
aggregration  and consolodation process).

It's clear that such spam is caused by:

	a) extra-terestial hackers footprinting humanity
	   ,indentifiying key idoits, stupidity "clusters"
	   and "pockets", with the purpose of a more 
	   successful invasion

	b) undergraduate sociology/anthropology term papers

	c) governments surveying their own populations as 
	   a defence to (a)

spam makes it incredibly easy to measure the stupidity of any given
portion of the net and there are benifits to be had from that. 

--- on a more serious note ---

There are actual real dangers to be had from this effect, there are
currently two CERT white papers awaiting release on the phenonoma.
And it's alleged that when citicorp was done, blackhats spammed
the entire staff, and based on who was gullable/stupid/easily 
convincable enough to reply, directed their social engineering efforts
at key idiot staff. 

It's a lot less dangerous mailing a fake admin request for a password
to comeone you know to be an easily convincable idiot than it is j.
random staff-member.

As spam becomes more common, it's either going to be less of a problem
or more of one, but a problem nonetheless. Don't just treat spam as
innocent ill-thought-out business plans.

-- 
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colmmacc at redbrick.dcu.ie

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