{"id":13406,"date":"2018-09-21T02:30:30","date_gmt":"2018-09-21T10:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2018\/09\/21\/news-7173\/"},"modified":"2018-09-21T02:30:30","modified_gmt":"2018-09-21T10:30:30","slug":"news-7173","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2018\/09\/21\/news-7173\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to the ol' spam-fighting drawing board"},"content":{"rendered":"

Credit to Author: Sharky| Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2018 03:00:00 -0700<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pilot fish returns from an extended holiday weekend to find his inbox full of spam — and for once, dozens of the messages seem to be related.<\/p>\n

“I was curious, so I didn’t delete all 50 of them right away,” says fish. “The first one was obviously spam — a ‘Hi, do you remember me, can we talk?’ message with a phishing link.<\/p>\n

“But the first reply was from an autoresponder at a legal-services company: Thank you for your email. You have reached the email inbox for… Please let us know if you have any questions.<\/i>“<\/p>\n

The next message is from another autoresponder, replying not to the spam but to the first autoresponder: Thank you for contacting us. This is an automated response confirming the receipt of your ticket. Our team will get back to you as soon as possible.<\/i><\/p>\n

Then the human users arrive: “Hello. Can you please advise what this is regarding.” “Who and what is this?” “I have no idea who anyone involved in this email string is or why I am receiving this.”<\/p>\n

Next, the inevitable explanation: “My IT person said this type of email is a spam robot. Don’t click on the links. You may receive more of these odd emails. But disregard and ignore them.”<\/p>\n

“Which was good advice,” fish says, “but too late for the next few human responses: ‘Looks like some type of phishing email chain and I do not know anyone involved either.’ ‘Phishing probably.’ ‘No idea what this connection is, but you guys all ROCK!’<\/p>\n

“At that point, Stockholm Syndrome kicked in when a software company president replied, ‘It’s to bring us all together — perhaps we shouldn’t ignore?'”<\/p>\n

Someone from a blood-donation center replies “I like your answer! You just never know!” — and because her reply-to line is the center’s email address for volunteers to give blood, that’s soon flooded with spam too.<\/p>\n

Next come jokes and social chatter, followed by some spam victims offering up their own products and services, from beachfront properties to custom-manufactured plastic products — followed by increasingly irritated demands from users to be removed from the thread, mixed with equally irritated “Stop Replying All!” messages.<\/p>\n

Eventually someone suggests that the victims “take the opportunity to learn how to create a rule or filter in your email program.” A few spam victims respond thanking him.<\/p>\n

“Finally a game designer pointed out that, according to the message headers, everything was being re-sent through a Google group because of an email address in the original spam,” says fish. “He gave specific instructions for unsubscribing from the group.<\/p>\n

“An hour after that, there were no more messages. Presumably someone complained to Google and the list was shut down.”<\/p>\n

Sharky gets lots of spam, but not nearly enough stories.<\/strong> How about sending me <\/i>your true tale of IT life this weekend at sharky@computerworld.com<\/a>? You can also comment on today’s tale at Sharky’s Google+ community<\/strong><\/a>, and read thousands of great old tales in the Sharkives<\/strong><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

Get Sharky’s outtakes from the IT Theater of the Absurd delivered directly to your Inbox. Subscribe now to the Daily Shark Newsletter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.computerworld.com\/category\/security\/index.rss<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Credit to Author: Sharky| Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2018 03:00:00 -0700<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Pilot fish returns from an extended holiday weekend to find his inbox full of spam — and for once, dozens of the messages seem to be related.<\/p>\n

“I was curious, so I didn’t delete all 50 of them right away,” says fish. “The first one was obviously spam — a ‘Hi, do you remember me, can we talk?’ message with a phishing link.<\/p>\n

“But the first reply was from an autoresponder at a legal-services company: Thank you for your email. You have reached the email inbox for… Please let us know if you have any questions.<\/i>“<\/p>\n

The next message is from another autoresponder, replying not to the spam but to the first autoresponder: Thank you for contacting us. This is an automated response confirming the receipt of your ticket. Our team will get back to you as soon as possible.<\/i><\/p>\n

To read this article in full, please click here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[11062,10643],"tags":[714],"class_list":["post-13406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computerworld","category-independent","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13406\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}