Friday, March 10, 2006

Spam, Spam, Spam and Spoetry

Elizabeth you siren me, coriander. glasswort you alveolus me, chocks.
Dastard you backyard me, colonial cybernetic. risen you begrudge me,
Baccarat rebuke alfresco
Imagery that leaps to the eye. Delicious randomness of words. But it isn't poetry, it's spam. Eva Wiseman in the Guardian explains:
Bayesian filters, anti-spam programs which rank words in emails according to undesirability, can be fooled when said bad words (Cialis, mortgage, porn) are broken up with arbitrary prose. A message screaming cock pump drug pimp for example, will be filtered out, but if it's couched with terms such as hawk, seize, hence and triumvirate, the spam will be eluded and your inbox will receive a surreal and striking surprise.

So striking and surprising, it seems that even a Professor of English was fooled!

Is there poetry in your inbox? Go take a look. And Kristen Thomas can show you how to recycle your spam e-mail into surprisingly effective poetry. (For even more spam fun, go here.)

I certainly have enough spam to work with at the moment. Remember I told you how I fight back when spammed? One spammer (local because the posts were in Malay) took exception because I returned his unwanted messages, and perhaps also because I called him a wanker. He retaliated by sending hundreds of spam e-mails which has brought my Streamyx account down.

I'd love to know how these folks get my address (and probably yours) in the first place and why TMNET doesn't seem able or willing to screen out the most persistent offenders. This guy should be easy enough to catch as he is sending mail from a yahoogroup.

Anyway, if you need to contact me, for now I'm sharonbakar@yahoo.com and the spam filter there works wonderfully.

7 comments:

Allan Koay 郭少樺 said...

how spammers get your email address:

when stupid people who forward useless things like lame jokes and chain mail do not delete the previous email addresses in the original email.

always BCC or delete all previous addresses before mass-forwarding anything.

bibliobibuli said...

visitor - thanks for the good advice - i hate the passed on passed on e-mails anyway ...

i've called streamyx and they're looking into it, and i've subscribed to their spam filter (should that even be necessary when you pay already????? how come yahoo and gmail do such a great job of screening spam and keep it free?) ... but just got 2 more e-mails from the same ... er ... spammer

Allan Koay 郭少樺 said...

that's why i never use my streamyx mail. i stick to GMail and YahooMail, although sometimes i have trouble logging in to GMail.

Anonymous said...

for everyone:

www.wipo.int.

sharon, we are seeing you monday yes? starbucks 10am.

bibliobibuli said...

thanks for the link on international property

yes, see you monday at 10

Anonymous said...

You want my advice? Infertile guys do SPAM. There is nothing in their brain therefore there is nothing in their...

bibliobibuli said...

anon- exactly what i told the guy!

i found that i had been subscribed to the yahoo group without my knowledge! went in and unsubscribed myself ... but how is that possible?