Spam Archives

Spam forgery
Some spammers are going to great lengths to make some messages look like they come from me.
April 12, 2007 - 119 words, 3 comments

Spammers love me
A comment spammer shows how much he cares.
December 17, 2006 - 52 words

Political recorded messages
Automated political telemarketing is getting out of hand.
November 5, 2006 - 300 words, 3 comments

Google Blog ping full of spam
Google blog search is getting overrun by spam.
October 16, 2006 - 37 words, 3 comments

Re-educating a spammer
In which I attempt to lead someone from a life of spam.
October 13, 2006 - 372 words, 5 comments

EcoPhones and Larry Lankford: spammers
Want to chat with a spammer? Here’s their toll-free number.
October 5, 2006 - 140 words, 12 comments

Niche spam
How effective can really spam aimed at specific niche markets possibly be?
February 13, 2006 - 107 words, 3 comments

My trackback spam problem
Trackback spammers are making life difficult.
October 26, 2005 - 198 words, 1 comment

Blog and Forum automatic submission scripts
Spammers are buying ever-more sophisticated tools to facilitate their comment spamming. Fight back.
December 17, 2004 - 290 words, 17 comments

RSSCache: spammers
Marketing to bloggers requires tact and intelligence. Spam isn’t the way to go.
October 14, 2004 - 160 words, 6 comments

My Spam in RSS
My spam is now in an RSS feed for your enjoyment.
October 12, 2004 - 166 words, 4 comments

Comments on comments
2000 comments and spam.
September 17, 2004 - 34 words, 5 comments

In case you really enjoy your spam
I received a great spam email today. Apparently it was sent as a multipart MIME...
September 2, 2004 - 305 words, 2 comments

New comment spam technique
Comment spammers are filling innocent blogs with spam links and then spamming those URLs into other blogs in a roundabout way to increase search engine rankings.
July 29, 2004 - 373 words, 29 comments

Spam fallout
A spammer made a spelling mistake in his spam and ended up driving lots of angry people to my site.
June 15, 2004 - 171 words, 4 comments

Why IP banning is useless
Many proposals for eliminating comment spam are focused on banning or throttling comments from the IP address of the spammer. What those proposals fail to address is that IP addresses are neither unique nor hard to come by.
February 10, 2004 - 448 words, 22 comments

Spammer discussion
Inside the (very small) minds of comment spammers.
January 11, 2004 - 116 words, 9 comments

Comment Spam makes the news
A news story on comment spam with quotes from me and others.
November 13, 2003 - 72 words, 10 comments

Spam Talk
I had a comment spammer’s site shut down. Apparently the spammer didn’t appreciate it.
November 9, 2003 - 1050 words, 18 comments

Comment Spam Manifesto
Spammers are hereby put on notice. Your comments are not welcome. If the purpose behind your comment is to advertise yourself, your Web site, or a product that you are affiliated with, that comment is spam and will not be tolerated. We will hit you where it hurts by attacking your source of income.
November 8, 2003 - 480 words, 214 comments

Cutting comment spammers off at the knees
How to hit comment spammer’s where it hurts: in the wallet.
November 7, 2003 - 445 words, 12 comments

Filtered Comments
Content filtering won’t do a thing to prevent comment spam.
October 10, 2003 - 126 words, 8 comments

Spam and Vandals, part 2
My theories about spammers acting like graffiti artists appear to be correct.
October 5, 2003 - 216 words, 5 comments

Spam begets spam
If you want to reduce the flow of comment spam to your site, be vigilant in removing the ones that do get posted. Leaving them up, even for a short time, can catch the eye of more spammers.
September 21, 2003 - 236 words, 11 comments

Distributed comment spam prevention
An organic system that responds to wholesale comment spamming in real time.
September 3, 2003 - 253 words, 17 comments

Comment spam
I’m fed up and want your help in devising a solution that will curtail comment and TrackBack spam.
September 3, 2003 - 466 words, 34 comments

Inter-dimensional spam
Spam advertising a $5000 reward for help in finding a Dimensional Warp Generator or a Acme 5X24 series time transducing capacitor. Seriously.
July 6, 2003 - 224 words, 9 comments

Spam Spell Checker
Spam tricks my filters by misspelling all the words. So how about a spam filter that works by spell check?
June 26, 2003 - 85 words, 10 comments

Phone spam
My first piece of spam sent to my cell phone reminds me of my pager waking me in the middle of the night.
May 28, 2003 - 96 words, 2 comments

Where does spam come from?
The Center for Democracy & Technology spent six months conducting a controlled study to determine where spammers get email addresses from and how to reduce the amount os spam you receive.
April 14, 2003 - 226 words, 4 comments

Blacklisting the headhunters
A SpamAssassin blacklist to block emails from a network recruiters who spam.
April 10, 2003 - 140 words, 1 comment

Is this the end?
Spammers are starting to figure out SpamAssassin.
January 22, 2003 - 98 words, 4 comments

Spam humor
Cruising through the spam that SpamAssassin caught in the last month, I came across some funny messages.
January 4, 2003 - 90 words, 2 comments

Fun with spammers
After this spam from a low end recruiter, I thought I’d try a different approach.
December 18, 2002 - 850 words, 10 comments

Interactive ICQ Spam
I’ve received spam via ICQ before, but this one was different.
November 21, 2002 - 143 words, 4 comments

SpamAssassin plugin for Eudora
Users of Eudora can de-spam their mailbox with this free plugin.
September 3, 2002 - 49 words, 3 comments

IMAPAssassin
Filter your mail with SpamAssassin from your desktop over IMAP.
September 3, 2002 - 56 words, 3 comments

SpamAssassin mail proxy
Filter your mail for spam with this perl tool.
August 29, 2002 - 17 words, 5 comments

Anti filter
Do spam filters violate the rights of email users?
August 26, 2002 - 496 words, 1 comment

Review: CleanMyMailbox
CleanMyMailbox would like to keep your mailbox spam-free. We reviewed the service to see how it performs.
June 22, 2002 - 1454 words, 2 comments

Spam service redux
It’s not the ideal spam filtering service we described recently, but Clean My Mailbox is close.
June 15, 2002 - 205 words, 2 comments

Spam filter service
Spam is a problem for users that could be solved by the right filtering service. This is what the ideal service might look like.
June 7, 2002 - 503 words, 15 comments

Phone Spam update
In February I wrote about an illegal telemarketing call I received. I reported the call...
April 2, 2002 - 50 words, 1 comment

Spam of the Day
And now the part of our show where I make fun of a random piece...
February 23, 2002 - 57 words

Phone Spam
Ring. "(Pre-recorded voice) Congratulations, you have been selected to win a free cellular phone. Press...
February 22, 2002 - 171 words, 1 comment

Spam of the Day
"Subject: If Your Hotel Rooms Don’t Look Bran New... " It’s important that hotel rooms...
February 16, 2002 - 18 words

Anti-spam spam
Some of today’s spam: BRAND NEW ANTI-SPAM TECHNOLOGY! Detect & eliminate spam BEFORE it gets...
January 14, 2002 - 74 words

Charity Junk mail
24-hour drive-thru: "Toys for hurting children in San Diego County." Says Julie: "They want toys...
November 21, 2001 - 19 words

Weird spam
And here I thought the spam I get is weird. Cam’s spam is stranger....
November 19, 2001 - 15 words

Fun With Spammers
Michael Fraase wrote about his experience with spammers, using one spammer as a representative example....
November 18, 2001 - 246 words

Spam Grammar
"Holiday are near, eliminate your debt" If the spammers can’t use decent grammar, why is...
November 15, 2001 - 23 words