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Author Topic: Spam/bacn/other mass email anecdotes  (Read 2477 times)

UniqueNewYork

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Spam/bacn/other mass email anecdotes
« on: 06 Nov 2013, 09:41 »

Ever since I got my mom flowers two Mothers Day's ago, I've been getting emails almost daily from 1800Flowers. I'd have opted out, but in a world first they have put, where anyone else would put an unsubscribe link, a link for you to put your friends on their distrib list. I don't even want to begin thinking about what kind of twisted human being would visit that upon anyone.

Also, from the beginning of the summer before my senior year right through to graduation, my class would get emails from some sort of US Marine recruitment program (I think some of them advertised OCS, and others straight up enlistment--my memory's a bit fuzzy). I have since heard that this is the case for every senior class at my college. This school is known far and wide for being a rather eclectic mix of hippies, hipsters, trustafarians, indie kids, huge nerds, and little else, so I can't imagine what they were expecting the turnout from these emails to be.
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snalin

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Re: Spam/bacn/other mass email anecdotes
« Reply #1 on: 06 Nov 2013, 10:05 »

I've mentioned it on here before, but I'm in a mailing group that keeps getting spam from chinese companies that wants to sell stuff to "our company". Like tonnes of steel, miles of barbed wire, or casts of prototypes. That's not very relevant for a student's council.
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UniqueNewYork

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Re: Spam/bacn/other mass email anecdotes
« Reply #2 on: 06 Nov 2013, 10:09 »

Does your student council have enough power to do, like, budgets and such? if so i think the course of action here is quite clear...
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Data:
>"I will always be puzzled by the human predilection for piloting vehicles at unsafe velocities."
Picard, later:
>"Well, Data, time for some unsafe velocities..."

bainidhe_dub

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Re: Spam/bacn/other mass email anecdotes
« Reply #3 on: 06 Nov 2013, 16:33 »

I know I've mentioned this before, but for a while in college I got a bunch spam that was just snippets of Jane Austen novels.
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snalin

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Re: Spam/bacn/other mass email anecdotes
« Reply #4 on: 06 Nov 2013, 16:38 »

We do have quite a bit of cash we can spend, but the two or three rooms we have for storage isn't really big enough for miles of barbed wire. Maybe we could buy some, wire off a park, and claim it as an independent kingdom?

By the way, the Norwegian name for student council is "fagutvalg", and we grabbed the best url ever - fagutvalget.no, which translates to the student council (.no)
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The Seldom Killer

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Re: Spam/bacn/other mass email anecdotes
« Reply #5 on: 07 Nov 2013, 15:17 »

I know I've mentioned this before, but for a while in college I got a bunch spam that was just snippets of Jane Austen novels.

good old Bayseian Filter bypass. Fortunately rendered redundant by other spam filters.
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pwhodges

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Re: Spam/bacn/other mass email anecdotes
« Reply #6 on: 07 Nov 2013, 15:23 »

A well-designed Bayesian filter has no problems with that.  The one I use doesn't sort on words, but on word pairs, which makes it much more sensitive to style and usage.
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