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03 Jan 04 - 03:58 PM (#1085397) Subject: BS: Scam or curse? From: RangerSteve I got two e-mails recently, each starts"Free cable$ TV", (with the dollar sign), followed by this: dour embraceable benchmark mayflower lyric abernathy compressor hollingsworth levi norm barbaric baptiste cyprian glorianna regent baxter cinerama dreamt flu dovetail frailty tolstoy temperance muck cider treasure chiang melon radioastronomy mulberry then there's a second paragraph that makes about as much sense as the first. Has anyone else gotten this? What's it mean? Will I bring a curse on myself by reciting the words? Or is it a puzzle where I'm supposed to figure out what all the words have in common and win a membership in Mensa? |
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03 Jan 04 - 04:13 PM (#1085408) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: Cluin Well, I ran the above paragraph through my copy of Norton CurseScanner and it came up clean. So I guess you're okay to just delete it and forget it. But better find a marestone and carry it in your pocket for a while just in case. |
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03 Jan 04 - 04:16 PM (#1085412) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: Midchuck I've gotten several of these. What they are, I believe, is another blow by the spammers in the war between spammers and spam filter designers. One of the gimmicks spam filters use is searching for messages that are all, or mostly, HTML. The spammers put in blocks of totally random plaintext just to make the message look more like a personal message and get by the filter. That's what I understand, anyway. Peter |
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03 Jan 04 - 04:29 PM (#1085421) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: Gareth I work on the basis that "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" and any spam containing the header of a free offer gets zapped by "mailwasher" or the Hotmail spammail before downloading. Thus any potential infection don't get as far as my machine. (Unless, of course, it offering free sheep !) Gareth |
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03 Jan 04 - 04:41 PM (#1085429) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: wysiwyg I dunno-- I had a run of them for awhile that was all segments of some work of fiction, can't remember now what book it was, but they were giving the text in a daily series of 1-page chunks it looked like! ~S~ |
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03 Jan 04 - 05:46 PM (#1085471) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: Nigel Parsons I don't know either, Code perhaps?? Taking the Message title about free cable TV, the first line: "dour embraceable benchmark mayflower seems to start "Do U remember a cable......."???? Nigel |
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03 Jan 04 - 05:58 PM (#1085480) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: Mickey191 Thanks Midchuck for the explanation. I've gotten many of these nonsense emails & was really baffled. Today a friend sent an email ripping Target stores & their nonsupportive stance on charities, including Toys for Tots & veteran's causes. But they do support Lesbian Organizations. (LOL) Last line "It's a French Company" and we should not shop there. I couldn't recall the addy to see if this is on a list as a hoax or if it's new. Of course I sent it to Spam fighters. |
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03 Jan 04 - 06:17 PM (#1085493) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: Amergin well...according to snopes.com...none of that was true about target anyways... |
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03 Jan 04 - 07:37 PM (#1085552) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: Peace .SDRAWKCAB TI YAS TON OD ,od uoy revetahW :evetS regnaR |
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03 Jan 04 - 08:28 PM (#1085558) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: Amos Peter has the rights of the matter -- it's chamelon coloring to make it look like mail instead of shit. A |
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03 Jan 04 - 09:42 PM (#1085592) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: Rapparee Brucie: did you break the code yet?? |
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03 Jan 04 - 10:13 PM (#1085603) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: Stilly River Sage If you use mail like Outlook that by default displays html then you'll see the image ad (filled with the true contents plus links and whatever else they choose to put in it) the spammers intend for you to see, but the part that the filter looks like is the text of nonsense words. If you have your email set to display text and not the html, then you see the nonsense and not the pictures. The spammers are presuming that most people use the html view. SRS |
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04 Jan 04 - 06:41 AM (#1085709) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: The Fooles Troupe and in the html they can do neat little tricks that will tell them if you open it, and so forth. Don't open it - use mailwasher and trash it! |
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04 Jan 04 - 11:41 AM (#1085793) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: mack/misophist The reason you sometimes get chunks of literature instead of garbage is another spammer effort to thwart filters set to look for garbage. (Baysian filters) |
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04 Jan 04 - 12:12 PM (#1085810) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: Mickey191 Need advice: I just rec'd. (From a Veteran's site) a very long piece purporting to be from a Marine Commander. It is describing the great & wonderful things happening in Iraq now that "the war is over & Sadam is above ground. Paragraph after paragraph it describes How bloody great it is to be in Iraq now. Makes it sound like Utopia. I'm so ticked off-our people are stil dying there. It's been said by our side that we will be there for a long time. If things are so great and their is now a huge contingent of Iraqi Soldiers-why the hell are we contemplating a long siege? This email sounds like it's from a commitee of G.Bush clones. How can one find out????? I'd love to copy & post it here at mudcat--but it is so long. Advise Please. Thanks. |
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04 Jan 04 - 04:35 PM (#1085951) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: RangerSteve Thanks for the explanations. Bruce, it would have been too much trouble to read it backwards and it's been deleted anyway. |
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04 Jan 04 - 04:50 PM (#1085957) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: Peace Rap, No, I have not, YET. It isn't for want of trying. It just won't click. But, I am going to keep trying, so no hints. When they take me to the room with soft walls and quiet sounds, I'll no doubt be saying things like, "But it was sooo clear" or "I a l m o s t had it" or "Ha ha ha ha ha!" Hope the trip to Washington was a good one. Happy New Year. BM |
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04 Jan 04 - 04:57 PM (#1085963) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: Stilly River Sage Mickey191, Find a chunk of the text that is in the beginning and is very distinctive. The title, the first sentence or paragraph would be good. Open Google or Metacrawler or your browser of choice and paste that text into the search line. You should come up with any sites that have posted the same thing on the internet. By viewing those sites as a whole you should be able to guage the context (who is posting it, perhaps even who wrote it or first posted it). Send us a link if you find it. Or post the first couple of paragraphs here and someone will track it down for you. SRS |
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04 Jan 04 - 09:13 PM (#1086115) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: Peace To add: Put the text in quotation marks, otherwise the thing will google lots of stuff that ain't what you're lookin' for. |
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04 Jan 04 - 09:46 PM (#1086126) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: GUEST,.gargoyle It is an "OLD, OLD" tool used in the days before Secure Internet Security and PGP's encryption.
Read each word as it poetic (stressed/nonstress) (Iambic, Trochi, etc) equivilant.....and convert into Morse Code....
EXAMPLE: i.e. THIS
lyric = long-short = N etc. etc.
Sincerely, |
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04 Jan 04 - 11:59 PM (#1086171) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: Stilly River Sage If you use google Advanced and drop it in the line where it looks for exact phrases, the quotes are put in for you. I should have mentioned that. Thanks, brucie. |
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05 Jan 04 - 12:36 AM (#1086180) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: Mickey191 SRS & Brucie, Thanks for the helpful tips. I did the search & it appears that all is true & not a scam. I don't know how you prove the existance of a Lt. Col.The names the search provided could be fake. I thought of putting some of the claims up here -but some people might use it as a hate platform. There is such ambivalence about this war-I must tell you in all honesty- as I read these claims I was hoping half were Bush lies. When I thought about that-I didn't feel very good about myself. Of course I want the country to be rebuilt & the people to have better lives. But my feelings about G.B. are so strong, it's skewed my thinking. The thing that really put me over the edge was a remark by this Lt. Col. that all this rebuilding has gone on, with such great success in such a short time. He compared it to the Twin Towers:.... It took the US over four months to clear away the twin tower debris, let alone attempt to build something else in its place. That son-of a -bitch! The reason it took so long was we cared about every single person, from 70 countrys, we cared to turn over each piece of material looking for body parts. Some people were buried represented by only an arm or a finger. DNA was taken from these body parts for ID purposes. We looked for id's, jewelry, wedding rings, photos, rosary beads. Thousands of tiny items found their way back to kinfolk. That was a slap in te face of every person who worke on that site. They could have gone in with bulldozers & leveled the place handily. That is if we had no regard for the sanctity of that hallowed ground. Sorry-but I'm ticked off. |
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05 Jan 04 - 09:22 AM (#1086366) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: artbrooks Mickey, either its a fake or its a real letter. I haven't seen it...I've gotten off all of the military sites for one reason or another, and don't care enough to look for it. If its fake, it is just one more example of the drivel available on the Internet. If not, it is one mid-level individual expressing his or her own opinion, informed or otherwise. My personal experience with Marines is that they tend to be a bit more conservative politically and socially than the average individual in the military, but that hardly means that this letter represents an official opinion of any kind...and perhaps the person who wrote it (if its real) is as unhappy that it made its way to the Internet as you were to find it there. |
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05 Jan 04 - 10:58 AM (#1086416) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: Peace SRS: THANK YOU. I didn't know that's what the advanced search thing did. I was always afraid to click it in case I disappeared or something. Learn somethin' new every day. Later. BM |
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05 Jan 04 - 11:17 AM (#1086435) Subject: RE: BS: Scam or curse? From: Mickey191 Brucie, I too was afraid-it was my first time-but it didn't hurt a bit. I didn't know you could take a part of an email & look it up & find the whole darn thing there. Now my name (Margaret) is forever tied up with this guys em. Could not believe that. Says I contributed his em. Which i did not-I sent in the first sentence. Come to think of it, we might disappear into the netherworld of cyberspace. Here's my hand! WUSH! It's dark in here. Ye Gads! What the hell is that?? |