Eclectical Engineering

Spam Zero: It was thirty years ago today…

2 May 2008 – 9:57 pm
May 2, 1978 ... thirty years ago ... James Earl Carter was President of the United States, the Soviet Union was still in business (and poised to launch itself into a tar-baby war in Afghanistan, with a young Osama bin Laden as a foot-soldier in the U.S.-backed opposition), the VW Beetle sedan had just gone off sale in the U.S., and a couple of California boys named Jobs and Wozniak had begun selling something called an “Apple ][” to nerdy hobbyists who could afford to drop $1295 to taste the dubious benefits of a “home computer” (I couldn’t afford one — I was a freshman engineering student at the time, and the price worked out to about three times my tuition). Oh, and yes — 2 May 1978 was also the Pink Letter Date on which the very first spam e-mail got sent.

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E360 v. Comcast: “Case dismissed!”

28 April 2008 – 9:02 pm
After a brief absence (occasioned by personal and business matters), I am back as promised to update the E360 v. Comcast story; it’s a decided setback for E360Insight, LLC, but perhaps somewhat better news for the rest of us who find our in-boxes constantly brimming with unwanted commercial appeals. I’m turning once again to the folks at http://www.spamsuite.com/ for the blow-by-blow.

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Comcast sued for blocking E360’s “marketing mail”

12 March 2008 – 1:22 pm
The firm E360 Insight LLC describes itself as “...a marketing solutions company specializing in highly effective, multichannel direct marketing.” At least one of those channels appears to be devoted to litigating against any and all parties who attempt to block its marketing e-mailings. The latest chapter in E360’s continuing courtroom saga involves the cable internet giant Comcast; E360 has filed suit against Comcast in an Illinois court for blocking E360’s advertising e-mails. Documentation for the case is posted at the indispensable SpamSuite.com website.

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Rick’s spam glossary, version 021

8 March 2008 – 10:51 pm
Just what sort of a person is a “chickenboner,” and what color hat does he wear? What is an “MX,” and why is going directly to one considered to be bad form? What does one do with something called a “teergrube?” When you’re trying to come to grips with a complex subject, it’s helpful to have a glossary. That’s why I’ve maintained my own list of terms often found in the study of e-mail spam. I’ve been collecting them for some years, and have uploaded the latest version to http://www.rickconner.net/spamweb/glossary.html; it contains nearly 200 terms from “419” to “zombie,” with derivations, remarks, and extensive cross-reference links.

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Spamvertizing, 1930s style: the Goat Gland Man

6 March 2008 – 12:03 am
An “alternative entrepreneur” seizes on a popular new communications technology and uses it to promote dubious and potentially dangerous wares; when his drumming gets too shrill, even the government is forced to sit up and take notice, and they promptly shut him down. Undeterred, he moves his operations outside the country and finds that he can actually reach even more people with his pitches, and becomes vastly wealthier. Sounds like internet spam, right? Well, yes it does, but it is also an apt summary of the career of the infamous John Romulus Brinkley, a quack doctor who used the infant technology of AM broadcast radio throughout the first half of the 20th century to advertise his controversial (and medically groundless) treatments to improve male virility.

Posted in Odd history, Spam info | No Comments »

Spammers shill for shoes

5 March 2008 – 10:11 pm
To the list of items offered to me via spam promotion, I can now add designer footwear. While the product may be new (to me), however, the M.O. is typical of the criminal drugs/penis/watches spammers that have come to predominate my inbox over the past few years.

Posted in Spam info | 3 Comments »

Spam news: Jaynes’ conviction upheld

2 March 2008 – 1:48 pm
In a 4-3 decision (PDF here) on February 29, the Virginia Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Jeremy Jaynes for violations of Virginia’s anti-spam law. The decision presumably moves Jaynes one step closer to serving a nine-year sentence on the charges. The court rejected Jaynes’ claims (also made to the Virginia Court of Appeals) that his activities were constitutionally-protected free speech, and that the Virginia law represented a excessive restraint on interstate commerce (Jaynes sent his e-mails from neighboring North Carolina).

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Ion TTUSB phonograph turntable

29 February 2008 – 2:15 am
If you are interested in getting into the vinyl ripping business, you’ll want a good turntable. The Ion TTUSB is one of many low-priced offerings catering to those who want to move their LPs and 45s (and possibly even 78s) to their computers, CDs, and MP3 players.

Posted in Reviews of stuff | 2 Comments »

Illegal character on line, rub out!

26 February 2008 – 9:36 pm
Like most of the other early internet services, the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is text-oriented rather than binary, so that the only data you are supposed to find in a raw e-mail packet (after MIME encoding, if needed) are ASCII characters — those being “seven-bit” byte values in the range from 0 to 127. These would seem to be pretty simple and clear-cut rules for everyone to follow, but of course spammers believe that rules are for the stupid.

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How to report spam websites hosted with Googlepages.com

25 February 2008 – 9:37 pm
Googlepages.com is a service provided by Google that enables its users to set up simple websites. Googlepages is free, and for the most part anonymous (apart from the Google account login). Of course, “free and anonymous” are very well-beloved words to the spammer, so it isn't surprising that Googlepages has attracted quite a bit of spammer abuse, the kind that Geocities and other established free-web-page services have been getting for many years. This post describes how to spot and report spammer abuse of Googlepages.

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