Cheap Louis
by wjw on January 10, 2013
This blog gets a lot of spam, but WordPress is exceptionally good about catching it, and so—- luckily— you don’t have to read it. But I do, because I’m reasonably conscientious about this blog, and I want to make certain that none of you get shut out unfairly.
Most of the spam is simply that, spam, but there’s one persistent spammer who— to all appearances— actually seems to be reading my posts and trying to respond in a way that will persuade me to give him access. (I assume he actually has a logarithm that does that for him.) At any rate, I’ve been getting some almost-coherent comments written in almost-English, some of which were good enough so that I had to wonder if I had a reader in foreign lands whose English was not quite up to grade.
But the spammer’s return address gives it away. It’s cheaplouisvuitton.
I’ve got to give Cheap Louis credit for trying. But, y’know, he’s just not there yet.
But what happens if Cheap Louis actually succeeds in producing a rational comment to one of my posts?
I’m reminded of this comic from xkcd. Which— as I read their creative commons license— I am permitted to re
post here.
“Algorithm”, do you mean?
As for the Cheap Louis, I wouldn’t put pass the spammers to use real people to gain access to popular blogs and then fall back to automated spamming, once the access is granted. So perhaps Cheap Louis is some poor chinese kid making a few bucks with his limited English skills…
Well per Charlie Stross’ tongue in cheek speculation regarding the spam/anti-spam evolutionary arms race – maybe it’ll be the first evidence of an actual-for-real AI?
At present the more sophisticated spammers are probably doing a variant on the ‘mechanical turk’ approach that ReCaptcha uses however (or paying for the spam equivalent of gold farmers, like Lektu says).
Regards
Luke
I have a site where potential students take a qualification test, to see if they have the skills to go to our school. Lately, the system has been filled up with a student named, “Ugg Boots.”
The posts are varied enough, I could not easily create a filter to keep the Ugg posts out. If I did, I would quite likely remove reals students. If I add some kind of, “What color was George Washington’s white horse?” Question as a filter, some students would be turned off, costing me money. Unless the problem get’s much worse, I will be facing the Hell of Ugg.
Ok, I will confess, I am nothing more than a deep cover, smart spambot, sent to infiltrate your message board.
Would anyone like to purchase some cheep knockoff designer clothing? I promise to steel your credit card and infect your computer with all kinds of spyware/spamware. Anyone?
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