Same for Nigerians seeking to transfer millions of dollars to me (if I give them my bank account number).
I haven’t gotten one of these in a year, after often getting several a day. I assume that the spammers realized that the return per period of time — the price of the activity — was less than its marginal cost: the opportunity cost of their time.
As the recession lingers and swine flu spreads, it appears that the antiviral drug Tamiflu has now surpassed Viagra as the most commonly spammed drug on the internet.
In what Wired calls a botnet “explosion,” botnets have taken control of about 12 million new IP addresses since the beginning of the year. (That’s according to a report by the anti-virus firm McAfee.) The number of zombie computers — those overtaken by a hacker, trojan horse, etc. — have increased 50 percent since last year. What spurred the increase? . . .
The conventional wisdom holds that electronic correspondence is unequivocally better for the environment than snail mail, but a new study finds a surprising result concerning the 62 trillion spam emails sent last year. The energy used to transmit, process, and filter spam could have powered 2.4 million homes, or all the foreclosed homes in the U.S., for a year. (HT: . . .
Sometimes a story is so irresistible that the media can’t stay away from it, even if it’s not much of a story. Consider the following scenario: A. The U.S. is hit by a seeming economic downturn; B. The costs of basic goods like fuel and food begin to rise; C. And so consumers flock to a cheap, old-fashioned staple to . . .
Is the “cropland bubble” bursting? New search engine uses ranking algorithm to reduce spam. (Earlier) Cardiac arrest fatalities may provide a new kidney source. (Earlier) Students gather data by sniffing livestock manure. (Earlier)
The art and practice of political data mining. (Hat tip: Chris Masse) CalTech scientist works to develop more efficient, less costly fuel cell. (Earlier) Spam made up 90% of e-mails delivered to big companies in November. (Earlier) LeverageCard.com offers increased options for gift card recipients. (Earlier)
A couple of weeks ago, Wired editor and The Long Tail author Chris Anderson got so fed up with receiving pitches from clueless (or lazy) publicists that he screeched out in protest, permanently banning said publicists from his in-box and, to the delight of some onlookers, publishing their e-mail addresses on his blog in a spammer-friendly format. Reaction to Anderson’s . . .
Courtesy of Craigslist Last week, you submitted lots and lots of questions for Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster, the founder and CEO, respectively, of Craigslist. They couldn’t answer every question but I think you’ll agree they’ve given us a lot of good answers, time, and ideas. I was particularly intrigued by Jim’s statement that investigative journalism has actually been damaged . . .
Attack of the killer text message spam. (Hat tip: Consumerist) Local businesses lagging in online markets. Jogging near traffic can harm your heart. (Earlier) Why do terrorists restrict their business to illegal drugs?
In March, Dubner and Levitt tackled the realities of identity theft. Now, with phishing scams getting ever cleverer, state government databases leaving sensitive private information accessible to the world, and identity thieves expanding their schemes into Web giants like Facebook, it’s worth asking: how will the problem of identity theft be solved? Technology innovators have been plugging away, of course, . . .
I wrote last week about the “invitation” I received to give an interview that would only cost me $3,995. Today I get another amusing spam email. This one is from Worldwide Law Enforcement Consulting Group, Inc. They are putting on a conference. There was nothing notable about the email, except for this one line: DUE TO GREAT RESPONSE EARLY REGISTRATION . . .
My spam filter is so good that I barely ever get to see all the Nigerian oil-scam spams any more. But this one poked its way through today. It is always nice to see people thinking creatively. My name is Sgt Kenny Baker, Jr. I am in the Engineering military unit here in Ba’qubah in Iraq, we have about $10, . . .
There was a nifty article in the New York Times Magazine a while back about “literary spam,” junk e-mail that includes passages from literary classics, in the hopes that legitimate text would fool spam filters. (Apparently, it doesn’t.) I just got a piece of spam that’s even niftier. Its subject line: “yipping econometrica psychophysiology flourish.” Considering the kind of messages . . .
According to CipherTrust, a company that makes its money protecting computers from viruses and spam, all the phishing attacks in the world are issued by a mere five “zombie” networks. Even more interesting is the fact that their targets are just as concentrated. Here, from CipherTrust’s page of spam statistics, are the top 5 targets and the percentage of phishing . . .
While it is true that Dubner and I sometimes feel that we are held hostage by our blog (in the sense that the constant need to provide new content weighs on us), it has never been our intention to hold reader comments hostage. We had no idea that if a reader comment contained one of hundreds of suspect words (automatically . . .
This e-mail reprinted below, which is circulating incredibly widely, may represent a new low in economic thinking. It declares September 1st “No Gas Day.” I got three copies today. Still, I wasn’t going to blog about it, until I went on the web-search engine technorati and saw that all sorts of bloggers seem to be embracing the concept. So here . . .