Personal Website of Yakov Shafranovich

If you forge it, at least do a good job

The big media and the blogsphere has been abuzz for the past few days about the new memos that turned up putting President Bush’s National Guard service in a bad light. Well, it seems that the memos are likely to be forgeries according to many document experts. But there is nothing better than seeing it with your own eyes - Charlie Johnson of LGF typed the text of the memo in a straight Microsoft Word document, printed it out and overlayed it on top of the “old” memo. The documents match exactly and we all know that even Microsoft did not have Word back in 1970s (I don’t think they existed yet). Results can be seen here.

This is exactly why I hate politics - just another dirty trick for the sake of power (not that the Republicans are any better).The moral of the story: if you forge something, at least do a good job

Posted in Politics | Comments Off

Hiring humans to do ad fraud

An article at ZD Net (via SlashDot) mentions the increased use of humans to perpertate ad fraud:

A growing alternative employs low-cost workers who are hired in China, India and other countries to click on text links and other ads.

A while back I mentioned the use of free porn sites to around reverse Turing tests used for spam. The possibility of hiring cheap employees in other countries have been discussed at the ASRG but this is the first real evidence that this trick has been used for anything.

Globablization … gotta love it.

Posted in Spam and Email | Comments Off

Another “Do Not Email” List Scam?

A friend of mine mentioned to me that he has been hearing radio advertisiments locally for a new “Do Not Email” List service called EthicalEmail.com. They claim to operate a do not email services based on the opt-out provisions of CAN-SPAM Act:

The process is simple. Email users can log onto ethicalemail.com and enter their email address. The addresses will then be compiled into a “do not contact” database. Mosele plans to deliver the database of names to the bulk email houses that are responsible for billions of emails being generated on the Internet. According to the law, the bulk email houses will have 10 days to remove those email names from their databases.

They also claim unique fingerprints and other techno mumbo-jumbo:

The government has decided not to create a “do not email list” out of fear that the lists will be used to create more Spam; however, ethicalemail.com’s databases will be specially coded giving them a unique fingerprint which will allow them to be traced if they are used to create more Spam.

Anyone familiar with the technology especially considering the three reports cited in the FTC Do Not Email list report, knows that this does not accomplish anything. It sounds like this is another scam, perhaps collecting addresses for spammers (since they don’t charge consumers like some other operations have).
It is interesting to note that the business man involved
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Posted in Spam and Email | Comments Off