RE: Spam names pattern change

From: William Abecassis (william.abecassis@logisticscience.com)
Date: Sat 06 Aug 2005 - 15:42:59 GMT

  • Next message: Scott Chase: "RE: Spam names pattern change"

    Hello Lawrence,

    You have raised an interesting topic that may potentially have some immediate applications. I would like however to point out a few things you may want to consider:

    First, the names used by spammer are not created manually - most of the time they come from three sources: 1) email addresses "harvested" online from websites, domain listings, and message boards, 2) Worms and Trojan horses that infect your contact book then phone home with a list of your contacts, 3) random permutations of dictionaries.

    Second, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) often filter spam before it even makes it to your inbox. In many cases, their filtering algorithm compares the sender's name to a blacklist which is dynamically managed. This results in a cycling of names whereby an initial explosion of SPAM with certain names prompts the filter to add those names to its list. Spammers catch on to this and use a new set of names. Then, as the volume of spam with those names drops they are removed from the blacklist - which brings us full circle.

    Finally, many spammers don't manage their own lists. Since they don't wish to use outgoing mail servers that can be traced back to them, they rely on hackers to provide this service. In some cases, this also includes use of a list.

    Best,

    William Abecassis

    -----Original Message----- From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Lawrence deBivort Sent: Saturday, August 06, 2005 8:26 AM To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: RE: Spam names pattern change

    Hi, Scott and everyone,

    In today's morning batch, no discernible Jewish names. If this continues, the 'Jewish spam names' pattern lasted discernibly about five days, starting as a smaller percentage of all spam names, and building to the high that I reported yesterday (thirteen of eighteen). I couldn't associate the names with any particular subset of spam subjects, and today the spam subjects seem normally distributed, as well. Only the names have changed.

    Is this significant?

    I think it must be, in that spam names are all deliberately and consciously invented. So WHY the intense selection of Jewish names?

    I often suggest to my students that 'the meaning of a communication lies in the effect it produces' but this is a bit of a trick assertion, but quite memetic in spirit. If we follow its implications, the question would be what
    'effect' the use of such explicitly Jewish names has on the recipients of the spam. For me, spam is quite negative, and the author(s) may have thought that this is a way to get people angry at Jews. But for the pattern was so obviously artificial I had the opposite reaction; that this may be a bizarre attempt to discredit Jews.

    I would be very interested in hearing from others on the list about your reactions, if you have received similar spam.

    And it will be interesting to see if any other ethnicities are picked on.

    -----Original Message----- From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Scott Chase Sent: Saturday, August 06, 2005 2:52 AM To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Spam names pattern change

    --- Lawrence deBivort <debivort@umd5.umd.edu> wrote:

    > Greetings, all,
    >
    > I receive about 30 spam emails per day, most of
    > which are caught by my
    > filters and deposited into a 'junk mail' file. Every
    > now and them I glance
    > through the spam to see if some 'good' email has
    > been snagged.
    >
    > In the last five days or so, a strong pattern has
    > emerged. As you know,
    > spammers assume invented names; the pattern lies in
    > the choice of names they
    > are making. Of eighteen emails in this morning's
    > crop, thirteen sport
    > 'Jewish' names, and are given as one-name
    > identifiers, rather than the
    > normal 'given name/surname' format. Thus the emails
    > purport to be from:
    > Grinberg, Halpern, Glucksman, Glickman, Gottlieb,
    > Horowitz, Finkbein,
    > Emmanuel, etc. Of this morning's eighteen, two
    > names were ambiguous (Ellis
    > and Timothy).
    >
    > The content of the spam has not changed as far as I
    > can tell; drugs, sex
    > drugs, software titles dominate.
    >
    > I have been wondering why this is happening. Is it
    > designed to appeal to
    > Jewish readers? Is it designed to embarrass Jews?
    >
    > Are you finding this true in the spam you receive,
    > too?
    >
    > What do you make of this?
    >
    >
    I was about to say that I hadn't noticed this pattern, but just checked my junk mail and noticed spam from people claiming to be "Gould" and "Feldman". Maybe you've picked up on a recent trend. Not sure if it means anything.

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    =============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit

    =============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit

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