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April 27, 2007
Can anyone explain this?
Quick question for any geeks out there. Here's a recent comment which was left which had absolutely nothing to do with the post or the other comments: Wagnerian frees artichoke religions?rebuilding emperors,clone... Thank you!!Now, there was no embedded link, no URL anywhere, no website listed, and the email address was alphabetical gobbledygook. (I Googled the phrase, and of course it is not a known slogan.) While I am inclined to think of a comment like this as being spam, we normally think of spam as having a purpose. But if there is no link and no website and the comment directs no one to anything at all, is it really spam? If it is, what does that suggest about spam? I can see absolutely no reason for posting random nonsense, unless it is done merely to ascertain whether the site administrator is paying attention. But wouldn't that require additional monitoring of the site? If these are placed by bots, are bots now intelligent enough to go back and check the blogs to see whether the nonsense comments got through? Why not just post the spam and be done with it? I'm wondering whether the goal might be not to spam bloggers but simply to annoy them. In whose interest would that be? Vendors of competing blog software are the only people who readily come to mind. But isn't that a bit farfetched? There must be a simple explanation, but I'm not seeing it. MORE: I just had a thought in a comments below: It can't be advertising without an ad. Unless, the urls were stripped out automatically somewhere.Could that be it? Might it be that this was once "normal" spam, but it was mangled by some ISP's spam-combatting software? Or are there such things? It seems to me that if they catch spam, they ought to delete it rather than "sanitize" it, but I guess anything's possible. AND MORE: Commenter Jim C thinks it may be "cleaned up" spam: On a more serious note there are filters that many blogging services are running to remove Java and other sctipts to prevent cross site scripting attacks. Perhaps this is an automated CSS virus that has had its payload cleaned by a filter.That's the only explanation that makes sense. If that's right, the spammers surely know about it, and doubtless they'll redouble their efforts. Wouldn't it be nice to catch one and deprive him of his rights? UPDATE: I really appreciate the explanations of how these things happen, but commenter Stewart alerted me to something I had't thought about: Others have given the likely technical answer. I'd just like to point out that this:Hilarious! (The only problem is that the story has probably already been written....) posted by Eric on 04.27.07 at 09:18 AM
Comments
How about a piece of a complicated Memetic Virus? Jim C · April 27, 2007 09:40 AM Viral Advertising? Jim C · April 27, 2007 09:41 AM Probably Just Junk though. Jim C · April 27, 2007 09:43 AM A flood of such nonsense comments were posted all at the same time, yet from diverse ISPs -- ranging from Inner Mongolia, Uruguay, to Verizon in the US. None had ads or URLs of any kind anywhere. It makes no sense. It can't be advertising without an ad. Unless, the urls were stripped out automatically somewhere. Is there such a thing as crippled or partially disabled spam getting through? Eric Scheie · April 27, 2007 09:50 AM On a more serious note there are filters that many blogging services are running to remove Java and other sctipts to prevent cross site scripting attacks. Perhaps this is an automated CSS virus that has had its payload cleaned by a filter. Jim C · April 27, 2007 09:54 AM Jim, you may be right. Eric Scheie · April 27, 2007 09:56 AM Thanks! The more I think about it, that has to be it. Eric Scheie · April 27, 2007 09:58 AM I notice you don't have a Turing test for posting so perhaps you are being hit by CSS worms. That said I am not familiar with any specific problems in this area at this time. Jim C · April 27, 2007 09:59 AM I'd love to install just the Turing Test, but the only MT versions I can find require only work if you also block anonymous comments, which I don't want to do. Eric Scheie · April 27, 2007 10:08 AM I get similar junk occasionally on my Blogger site which does have a Turing test. I see them more frequently on my posts to Classical Values. M. Simon · April 27, 2007 10:22 AM Doesn't seem to be much of a problem here yet anyway. By the way love the blog. I rarely comment but read all the time. Jim C · April 27, 2007 11:00 AM The usual explanation for such things in email is that they are attempts to poison natural-language-recognition-based spam filters--if text which looks (superficially) like valid English is repeatedly classified (correctly) as spam, this will raise the false-positive rate to an unacceptable, making those spam filters useless. Perhaps this is an attempt to do likewise with comment spam filters. Aaron · April 27, 2007 12:27 PM I have noticed nonsensical spam emails for at least a year in my "Spam" box: -"The pilots weren't missing cooking -"That car mechanic buys him a present. Etc. I have seen several without any links, though. Aaron's probably correct about the goal being to disrupt spam filters. That's why Bayesian filters are best, after some tweaking. Here's a good, lengthy-ish article on the subject: skh.pcola · April 27, 2007 02:56 PM Others have given the likely technical answer. I'd just like to point out that this: Stewart · April 27, 2007 04:01 PM Step 1: post a unique phrase Jeff Medcalf · April 28, 2007 12:20 AM Wilgen! Haus Millen! killingthemonkey · April 28, 2007 05:31 AM Post a comment
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