Valleywag

Posts Tagged “

Spam

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blogging for dollars

Blog-for-cash spam promises to be next San Francisco fashion statement

An email I got this morning reads, "Bloggers Wanted. Are you one the bloggers? I mean ... do you write blog?" Why yes, I do! A prediction: This idiot-savant spam illustration will end up on CafePress as T-shirts, mugs, and bumper stickers before the day is out.

2:40 PM on Mon Jul 28 2008
By Owen Thomas
298 views, 3 comments

spam

Convicted "spam king" escapes from prison, kills self and family

If you ever wished that a spammer would die, die, die, congratulations — you got your wish. But we hope that hearing the fate of Eddie Davidson doesn't make you feel smugly self-satisfied. Davidson of Benet, Colo., one of several convicted "spam kings," walked away from his minimum-security prison camp and shot himself, his wife, and his 3-year-old daughter, Department of Justice officials said Thursday. Davidson's spam scheme involved sending out massive volumes of emails with manipulated headers to pretend they were from legitimate companies pushing penny stocks. More »

2:20 PM on Fri Jul 25 2008
By Alaska Miller
1,917 views, 13 comments

social networks

Antispam bot goes sentient, tries to save us from Twitter

Too bad about your follower count. Sorry bro. Twitter's latest antispam measure got a little crazy, locking out new followers and — depending who you believe — either removing legit followers or showing just how much of your fan club are silicon instead of carbon-based. (Screengrab by ReadWriteWeb)

12:20 PM on Thu Jul 24 2008
By Paul Boutin
606 views, 2 comments

crime

Yet another spammer gets the slammer

Robert Soloway became the third man to get prison time for spamming on Tuesday. Soloway has been sentenced to four years in prison — short of the nine that prosecutors sought. Assistant U.S. attorney Kathryn Warma told reporters that while Solomon had earned far less than other busted bulk mailers — $700,000 over three years, compared to that much in a month at times for recently-sentenced Jeremy James — the prosecution felt it necessary to send a message that the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 can and will be enforced. (This is where I'm supposed to add that spammers are evil and Soloway deserves to drop the soap behind bars for the next 47 months. Sorry, but my honest reaction: The drunk driver who killed my friend got a lighter sentence. My inbox isn't that sacred.)

1:20 PM on Wed Jul 23 2008
By Paul Boutin
251 views, 5 comments

spam

Spam King sentenced to be Jail King for 30 months

Convicted "Spam king" Adam Vitale was sentenced to 30 months in prison Tuesday, for spamming more than 1.2 million AOL subscribers. Vitale had boasted of using 35,000 proxy computers to bypass AOL's spam filters with greater than 80 percent successful delivery to members. More »

10:20 AM on Wed Jul 16 2008
By Paul Boutin
804 views, 6 comments

online advertising

Yahoo spamming Twitter to promote Live video service

The Twitter account for updates from Yahoo's Live video service has a respectable 2,025 followers (worth a combined $3786.75 according to the latest estimates). However, the account is following 6,744 users. Which means the Live team is either really, really interested in what you each and every one of you ate for breakfast or it's adding any account it can find — and generating email and SMS notifications in the process. It's just bad form, really.

1:00 PM on Wed Jun 25 2008
By Jackson West
438 views, 3 comments

your privacy is an illusion

Facebook profiles for sale on eBay

An eBay seller going by the handle pseudopr415 is offering 10 Facebook profiles, each with a minimum of 200 friends, for sale in an eBay auction that closes June 14. The seller writes: "I currently am testing the waters, and would like to see if any marketers are interested in using these." Facebook makes a lot of noise about how its users trust the site so much, they'll often supply their cell phone numbers, email and home addresses for their friends and contacts to see. Access to that information could be worth plenty to spammers as well as identity thieves. The product description pseudopr415 created — including a five-step fake profile plan, descriptions of the characters he's created for the 10 profiles and, in case you have any questions, an email to contact the sneaky bastard — below: More »

2:00 PM on Thu Jun 12 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
2,417 views, 7 comments

spam

Want to spam Craigslist? Google makes it easy

Google search advertising not only makes the company billions of dollars per quarter, because Google matches ads to user search terms, it's also actually useful. For example, those looking for an automated way to clutter Craigslist with spam need only use the search term "Craigslist spambot" to find a full complement of third-party vendors willing to serve. What's more, Google makes it really easy for these advertisers to sell their wares through Google's own shopping cart service, Google Checkout. That way, if Craigslist spammers own a Google account (these days, we're sure they do), owning their very own spambot is only one or two clicks away. The best thing about Google's whole ad system? More »

8:40 AM on Tue May 27 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
1,034 views, 4 comments

spam

Secret Service can't help Stickam keep users from saying "bye bye"

Stickam, the webcam site the New York Times says is backed by Japanese pornographers and Stickam PR says isn't, has a spam problem. CEO Steve Fruchter says last November, hackers broke into "an old community forum system" and stole 2 million Stickam user email addresses. Now users keep getting email from a company called SlickCam. A Stickam flack told the Times its contacted "the Secret Service and a specialized Internet security research firm" in effort to halt the onslaught. Is it working? More »

8:40 AM on Fri May 16 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
537 views, 2 comments

spam

Careful whose emails you enter into your PBwiki -- they might get spammed

A tipster tells us PBwIki — an enterprise collaboration site used by companies such as Cisco, AT&T and Citi — mines the content its customers upload for email addresses to spam.
I got an email from pbwiki even though I wasn't signed up for any kind of a mailing list or anything, so I emailed them about it. They only had my email address because it was the content in a wiki hosted with pb wiki and they dodged the question and just talked more about the content of the email. They're definitely helping themselves to all the data in their user's business wikis,
PBwiki founder David Weekly denies the charge entirely and tells us: "PBwiki does not have any scripts to go through private wikis and scrape for email addresses." Update: In the comments, Weekly calls this story "bullshit of the finest and legally actionable kind."

8:00 AM on Fri May 2 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
995 views, 55 comments

security

Google's Blogger flooded by spammers

Over the last few months, wily spammers may have figured out how to crack the security feature known as "captchas." With an army of compromised Windows PCs known as botnets, they've been using their new power to flood Google's Blogger with spam. Why Blogger? More »

11:20 AM on Fri Apr 25 2008
By Jackson West
1,018 views, 4 comments

sex trade

Are any of the working girls on MySpace real? Yes, and here's how to hire them

Not content to pin the blame for Internet prostitution on usual suspect Craigslist, Kenneth Franzblau — New York State's director of Human Trafficking Prevention — cites MySpace as a hotspot of criminal sexual activity. Franzblau is an Eliot Spitzer appointee. You'd think maybe, prior to the former governor's departure in a prostitution scandal, he'd have briefed Franzblau on how to actually find hookers on the much-blinged social network. Could someone forward him a link to the following helpful tips? More »

12:00 PM on Mon Apr 21 2008
By Melissa Gira Grant
6,616 views, 11 comments

self-demotion

Andrew Baron accelerates Twitter's descent into spam platform

Twitter has won kudos for being relatively resistant to spam. That may change. Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron, not pleased with the level of interaction his account has generated, has put it up for sale on eBay.
It would be silly to just delete this account I have here, especially if there is someone out there that had like interests and had something to say or wanted to get involved in some relevant conversations.
By "something to say," we assume Baron means "something to sell" — after all, why else would someone up the current bid of $1,525? In order to reach Baron's 1,635 followers with breakfast updates and cat photos? More »

2:00 PM on Mon Apr 14 2008
By Jackson West
551 views, 3 comments

spam

Sometimes progress means getting spammed in Arabic

Last week saw news that a Saudia Arabian man murdered his daughter because she was using to Facebook to chat with a boy and that merchants in Dubai sold AMD processors to Iranians who built them into Iraqi roadside bombs. But let's be clear, the place where Silicon Valley meets the Middle East isn't all honor killings and distributed warfare. For example, there's this piece of spam I got my in inbox today. More »

7:00 PM on Wed Apr 9 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
784 views, 4 comments

spam

Mahalo walking fine, spammy line with Google

Last week, a 43-page internal Google document detailing guidelines for the company's search result "quality raters" was leaked online. It details exactly what qualifies as Web spam, and as SEO pro Aaron Wall points out, much of Mahalo fits the bill. Content copied and pasted from other sites? Check. Lots of AdSense ads and affiliate links? Check. Mostly links to other sites? Check. Anything left after that stuff is removed? Not really. Google doesn't differentiate between human-curated link farming and automated link farming. And a pagerank demotion for the domain would also affect the "how to" content Mahalo shifted its focus to, leaving founder Jason Calacanis and his investors to depend on traffic generated by Veronica Belmont obsessives.

3:00 PM on Fri Mar 21 2008
By Jackson West
1,358 views, 13 comments

spam

ValueClick settles for $2.9 million in spam case

ValueClick's $2.9 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission of charges it spammed users with deceptive offers was filed in federal court today. While ValueClick publicly announced the settlement terms last month, and gets away without having to admit wrongdoing, the bad news couldn't have come at a worse time. The company also stands to lose eBay's affiliate marketing business next month The company's stock was down 7 percent today, hitting a one-year low at $16.20 a share. Look for the company to start offering free iPhones to anyone who buys 50 shares of VLCK, subscribes to Ladies Home Journal and applies for auto insurance.

4:10 PM on Mon Mar 17 2008
By Jackson West
138 views, Comment

clips

Spam, brought charmingly to life


The first spam email Boing Boing reenacts in this clip was authored by one Mr. Howitzer Cannonpants. It explains that while a rod in Moses's hands may part the seas, nails in yours could only build a birdhouse. Also, Mr. Cannonpants notes, women freak out when they see his crazy-sized huge brother in his hands. In the second email, Maurice asks for cash. He needs it because large-busted women — wearing no bras — tried to push him into a lake when he visited Canada's manpower office.

12:20 PM on Tue Mar 4 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
256 views, 2 comments

spam

HotorNot kindles true love

Founders James Hong and Jim Young sold HotorNot earlier this week, but so far, it's business as usual for the operation. Meaning, the site remains a very effective means of getting a date. Check out Daniya here. She's completely smitten with our secret correspondent and man of mystery, Tips. Sadly for Daniya, Tips prefers a different kind of "dating" site.

9:40 AM on Wed Feb 13 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
967 views, 1 comment

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