This isn't a political post. At least, I think it isn't.
Over the past couple of months, I've had to deal with a vastly increased amount of comment spam. These are fake "comments" that are really ads for viagra and porn and real estate gimmicks and so forth. Every blogger has to deal with that crap. These things annoy the hell out of me, and I never allow the ads to be published. But at least I can understand the financial motive behind them.
I do not understand the "non-sequitur" comments I have also been receiving. I don't know if other bloggers have had to confront this bizarre phenomenon.
Every few days, I receive a one-sentence comment that makes no sense whatsoever. These comments have no relationship to anything I've written. Sometimes, they are directed toward posts that are years old. These short texts (which never slip past the comment moderation process) are completely baffling.
Although I have not saved any examples, the following message (concocted by yours truly) captures the flavor of what I face two or three times a week:
"Briefcase insanity involves the fingernail of Melanie Calvat in several dogged frustrations."
And that's it. No hyperlinks. Nothing to indicate the writer's purpose.
And now I've run into a very similar phenomenon on the world wide web.
Here's what happened: After thumbing through some old stories, I decided to look up Wilfredo Saurin, just to see if he's been involved in any new shenanigans. In case you've forgotten, Wilfredo is a con artist from the Philippines. His name came up in several earlier Cannonfire posts concerning the "mystery bonds" pseudo-scandal. Those bonds were faked "Federal Reserve Bonds" printed on an inkjet printer, artificially aged, and palmed off as real to gullible folk around the globe.
For old times' sake (as it were), I plugged good old Wilfredo's name into Google. Some familiar stories showed up. But then, as I went further and further down the Google trail, I discovered some very strange sites -- "non-sequitur sites," I call them -- which all mentioned Wilfredo Saurin.
The term "non-sequitur sites" stems from the fact that Google offers preview excerpts which sound exactly like the non-sequitur comment spam mentioned above. Example:
Site name: "in their in their Cobain describes simple several vowel simple ..."
Excerpt: "pleasure which these hot lads wilfredo saurin. wilfredo saurin. a science of body systems cooking class lesson plans ..."
I did not click on the link to see the actual site, because Google warns that it may harm my computer. Apparently, it's one of those sites that may infect computers with malware.
Another example:
Site name: Sisterfairy.com
Excerpt: "recipe book with picture steps. travel less wilfredo saurin..."
Site name: Round 2 It Ranch
Excerpt: "dick page make up artist. addition built upon wilfredo saurin. wilfredo saurin. unit power town hardies fast food restarants..."
Site name: MIB SECURE
Excerpt: "pedestrian summary by ray bradbury. of truth is wilfredo saurin. wilfredo saurin. but false for another hombres negros vergudos ..."
Site name: nasi kandar recipe
Excerpt: "who was causing tire size calculator miata. tire size calculator miata. beliefs throughout wilfredo saurin. wilfredo saurin. this first visit was suzuki"
You can see that one for yourself by typing "nasi kandar recipe wilfredo saurin" into Google. (Nasi kandar is a traditional meal in Malaysia, and it looks yummy.) Here's my favorite:
Site name: Gokhan Alpak Online Portfolio
Excerpt: "... and reme unique whips and reme possessed of supernormal wilfredo saurin wilfredo saurin spirits whom she had celebrity fake movies fakenhouser celebrity ..."
I clicked on the link, arrived here, and found no writings about Wilfredo Saurin. In fact, I found no text whatsoever. As near as I can tell, none of the links actually take you to functioning websites.
There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of similar sites out there. They all mention the famed Filipino con artist. And they all make no sense whatsoever.
Some sort of scam is afoot. But what?
I would advise any internet gumshoes who might take an interest in this mystery to be careful about clicking links. The scam, whatever else it may be, appears to have something to do with planting malware on your system. I'm going to spend the next few hours giving my system a thorough cleaning.
12 comments:
During my moments of extreme tin foil paranoia I think what if the anti-virus/web security software companies leave a hole in your security the Feds can access without your knowing.
You think your data is safe and secure ... but?
Don't do it. It's an energy sink meant specifically for this purpose. In my decade or so of following para-political blogs (especially those of merit) I've seen many a bright men fall down these rabbit holes. You'll just end up demoralized and paranoid. It will be "Theresa Duncan" all over again. DON"T DO IT!!!!
I've come across email spam that has various non-sequiturs like the kind you describe (though not mentioning wilfredo saurin, at least that I remember). For some reason, I don't get it with my hotmail account, but I get it with my university email...
Yeah, I've confronted that when googling myself. I've produced several films and a little bit of worthwhile theatre and have a singular name - so stuff pops up. My name is on those sites. I have no idea what they are.
As for email with mysterious headers, I think the companies sell key words. My husband has an ex-girlfriend whose name pops up in message headers all the time. As do names of his shows and whatnot.
Yes, I too find long streams of absolute nonsense in my spam box. I only glance to make sure that a valid comment was not "trapped" and then I move on so I can't confirm names. I did begin to think that some computer was stringing words together to get past the filters but I would also advise against following them back to the source.
I run across some of this all the time. There seems to be a common theme that's trying to force you to spend as much time as possible thinking about it. When you're thinking about it, you're not thinking about much else and that seems to be the goal. Call it a "purposeful waist of time scheme".
Marty Didier
Northbrook, IL
If you want to venture into the seamier side of the web, you can safely do it from a guest OS. Install linux on something like Sun's VirtualBox, and take a snapshot of it (for recovery). If you use that to browse, then you can take as many risks as you like with no repercussions. Just restore the snapshot to clean it up.
The random text can serve a number of different purposes – all commercial.
The placement of such text on web pages is generally used to trick people into clicking on them. Folks do a Google search, then click on the page. The web sites generally contain either malicious javascript or iFrames that will cause malware (bots, ad software, etc.) to be downloaded on the user’s computer. Typical antivirus packages are relatively poor at picking it up, so much of it gets through (e.g. I think it was estimated that, on average, an antivirus package with up to date definitions reduced the probability of infection with the Zeus bot by about a quarter). Over the last couple years, using web pages for drive-by downloads has become the “it” technique among writers of commercial malware (no user interaction is required – just loading an HTML page is sufficient for infection). I suppose (though I’m not sure of this) that even a Blogger comment with embedded hidden HTML could serve as a vehicle.
Random text in e-mail spam or comments can serve other purposes. One is to test whether an address is still active. Another is to test the filtering process (does the message get through), which can provide information for algorithms to generate commercial messages that evade filtration.
In a comment on this blog, I wrote:
Ever since the earthquake in Armenia in 1988, which may have been triggered by a Soviet nuclear test in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, I've been very suspicious of earthquakes. Interesting that the US seems to be spooking the shit out of Venezuela at the moment, buzzing that country from Curacao, having procured an OK from the Netherlands, as well as building up its capability in Colombia. Could this earthquake be a threat or a test?
Hugo Chavez is said to have said it was caused by the US Navy, deliberately against Haiti, as a test run for doing the same against Iran.
The reporting trail goes to the Russian Northern Fleet, curiously not mentioned in the Russia Today coverage.
In case anyone is interested, here's a paper dissecting a somewhat complicated blog spam attack.
http://www.packetstormsecurity.org/papers/general/valsmith_colin_blog_spam.pdf
But have you gotten any emails from Ellie Light? :-)
http://uppitywoman08.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/obama-fan-astral-projects-this-would-explain-all-those-letters-to-the-editor/
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2010/01/hillbuzz-founder-of-gay-puma-site-says.html
This has nothing to do with your posting, but then again since your posting is about random messages that make no sense maybe it does.
I'm just posting it to point out that Obama's thugs are on the prowl again. I think Hillbuzz crossed the line by attacking Coakley and that in many ways they just seem really bizarre-but the Obama people are just beyond creepy.
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