Jan 31, 2007

Do I love spam indeed?

Today I've noticed one strange thing I've been never noticed before: I love spam, and this love is strange one. There's a lot of joy in deleting all those unwanted emails and bulk blog comments. When I'm clearing my private space from spam, I feel myself like the one who chase the Devil.

A bit of dangerous joy in the middle of the war?

Jan 23, 2007

How to find out the most popular pages of a site?

First, this is the real question I want get answer to .
Second, this is my little Google test. At this moment exact google request "How to find out the most popular pages of a site?" gives no result as well as "To find out the most popular pages of a site" and "this is my little Google test" phrases.

Let's see whether the Google is able to find my tiny experimental post.

Jan 21, 2007

Another spammer idiot was caught. Lol.

First, let me ask you to answer just one question, similar to ones you can meet in common IQ test:

Q: Which one of the four countries is least like the other three?
  1. USA
  2. Ireland
  3. Sweden
  4. Ukraine
A: No one.
Almost every time I hear another spammer was caught I become surprised. Almost every time, because usually spammers come from successful countries and each time I hear about this kind of person I think:

"What kind of self-confident idiot you must be to make such dirty money in the country which gives you a lot of opportunities to make money without breaking the law?"

You'll be caught, surely. And the probability to be canned grows together with your spammer career success.

Look where the spammers come from: USA (first result in google, named as very prolific spammer), USA-2, USA-3, Ireland, Sweden (by SpamHuntress!), Ukraine (probably this one is the representative of "eastern European spam mafia"?).

The last one surprises me a bit less than others from the list, but still do surprises. Spammer from Ukraine could be not so surprising some time ago (3-5 years), because Ukraine was much more deeper in poverty and IT sphere was absent there -- but these times are gone, because now Ukraine has a lot of IT companies where geek can work. So clever guys can find good job anywhere.

BTW, is there any up-to-date list of caught spammers like this wall of shame?

P.S. Just have noticed this post: "America leads the world in the number of spam messages" which hardly could be explained only the fact that US users have a lot of poorly protected computers (report by the Sophos). It is dubious because despite spam sources are 85% zombie computers which was malwared due to low protection, spam is still being good accepted by users (what kind of email do you respond?) so people are still responsible for answering the spam messages.

Jan 18, 2007

Unhappy end: the sad story about failed attempt of phentermine withdrawal from general use

Listen to me, Darling. Phentermine, our so loved #1 spam drug is obviously dangerous. Any mindful babe can check it easily via google (for lazy ones I'll post detailed explanation in next post).
Phentermine is addictive physically and psychologically, bringing serious side effects, causing disporia and personality changes. Many people have had had to go in to rehab to get off of this drug. Stop me! I've just promised you I'll prove this later, so I'll do (with some really nice pics!)
Let make us way back in time. The short story is European Commission Decision has tried to withdraw phentermine license. However, they failed because big old boys, some of the phentermine license holder appealed. It is understood darling: if You are Big Old Boy with Big Money you surely have all rights for spreading Your dangerous drug (dad, it is not dangerous indeed, please, please, please, please-please-please say it isn't harmful) over the world. Just because you're phentermine license holder and you don't want to lose your money. Let your money work for you, big old boy. To not be unsubstantiated, let's have a look at the official documents from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency website (UK):

24 Dec 2002 | European legal action relating to anorectic agents
The European Court of First Instance has, on 26 November 2002, annulled previous European Commission decisions (2000) to withdraw the licences (marketing authorisations) for anorectic agents. In accordance with this, the MHRA (medicines) is reinstating the relevant marketing authorisations for the following: amfepramone (Diethylpropion, Tenuate Dospan) and phentermine (Duromine, Ionamin).
11 May 2001 | European withdrawal of anorectic agents/appetite suppressants: new legal developments, no new safety issues: Licences for phentermine and amfepramone being withdrawn May 2001

This relates to a legal action and is not related to any new safety concerns. A Europe-wide review of the risks and benefits of anorectic agents/appetite suppressants led to the withdrawal of their licences in April 2000 following a European Commission Decision. Following an appeal by some of the licence holders, the effects of the Commission's decisions were suspended and the licences for amfepramone and phentermine were re-instated in April and August 2000, respectively. The suspension of the decisions have now been set aside by the European courts and the licences for these drugs must be withdrawn again in the European Union.In the UK, the following products are affected:
  • Duromine (phentermine)
  • Ionamin (phentermine)
  • Diethylpropion (amfepramone)
  • Tenuate Dospan (amfepramone)
The following advice sheets have been forwarded to relevant practitioners:
  1. Advice for health professionals
  2. Information sheet for patients
Is it clear now, Darling? Do you still desire perfect body by the price of good health?

Jan 17, 2007

What kind of email do you respond?

Dylan Boyd from eROI Email Marketing Agency recently posted "What Kind of Email Do You Get?" article. There he points to interesting study on counting what type of email people get during given period of time. Of course, spam takes a huge part of those emails.

There's Email Analyst by Email Data Source which let you have such statistics for you and produces reports to answer the question "What Kind of Email Do You Get?".

However, as for me, it is even more valuable to have another type of report: "What kind of email do you respond?" Many people couldn't care less about what they actually doing with their email.

I guess a there's would be a lot of surprises for many users like responded spam letters.

P.S. Just figures out that USA leads in the spam business.

Jan 16, 2007

Spam consumer groups

This post was originally a comment to Why We Are Still At War post by theemailwars.com blog.

One of the main reasons why spam actually works: because there are people which thoughtless enough to click spam links.

It is the subject of right anti-spam propaganda to make people understood their risks when clicking spam links. Surely, it is important to explain anyone the danger scams of using spam resources; but it is even more important to explain that usual goods being sell via spam are pretty dangerous enough to affect their life badly. For example, phentermine is not a toy for weight loss but real power drug which will control their life if used enormously.

There's lack of such anti-spam campaigns in the web.

Robert H. Smith's study (see link at the top of this post) proves that at least 11% of users purchase products and services from spam e-mails.

But it is interesting to make deeper exploration of spam-clickers. We should separate this whole community into groups by spam subject they respond to. For example, there will be viagra-clickers group, spam-insurance consumers and so on. After we have such study, it is possible to make targeted anti-spam campaigns to explain people why responding to spam messages is bad in any case.

And every subgroup of spam consumers should receive corresponding explanation why spam doesn't worth responding. Then spam will lose its supplying roots. So it won't worth sending, and so will go away.

Jan 15, 2007

Who actually buys phentermine?

We attacked by a tons of blog spam comments offering phentermine and other "useful" drugs.

But who really buys them? I have never used to use it; my friends too.

Do you have any friends or relatives who buys phentermine?

Jan 12, 2007

Spama Yoga: unexpected spam message

Today I've got another interesting spam message. Surely it is the first one that really doesn't annoy me because it is a bit unusual! The message just invites me to attend a Yoga seminar for people with loaded lifestyle. If someone is really interested, I even can give a link here.

And there's the main point: googling "yoga for business people" gives just 32 results. It is great area to investigate creation of trafficable site, I think.

Jan 5, 2007

Old Idea of Anti Spam Business (changed)

The main idea of Anti Spam Business was simple.

Then I've changed my mind so this new blog is appeared.