From PCRISPE1@UA1VM.UA.EDUThu Nov 23 23:54:59 1995
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 1995 18:54:58 CST
From: Patrick Douglas Crispen
Reply to: TOURBUS-REQUEST@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
To: Multiple recipients of list TOURBUS
Subject: TOURBUS NOV. 23, 1995 -- SPAM
TOURBUS - NOVEMBER 23, 1995
TODAY'S STOP: SPAM
TODAY'S ADDRESS: http://www.suck.com/dynasuck/95/11/15/
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\___/ \___/ "Why Surf When U Can Ride The Bus?" \___/
Happy Turkey Day, y'all! (For those bus riders who may not be
in the States, every fourth Thursday in November is Thanksgiving,
a holiday where we celebrate the one day in history that
we were nice to the Native Americans. People in the
United States celebrate Thanksgiving by consuming vast
quantities of turkey (my parents are currently cooking a 20
pound bird to feed our family of four), followed by the
ritualistic watching of football (by the men) and the
final approval of tactical war plans for the Christmas
shopping season (by the women))
It is customary for the turkey growers of America to give the
President of the United States a free, live turkey. It is also
customary for the President to grant the turkey a Presidential
pardon and to place the turkey in a petting zoo. This year,
however, while President Clinton was making up his mind
about the pardon and the Republicans in the House were
debating a continuing resolution to override the President's
pardon and to condemn the President for being soft on
poultry, the turkey died of old age.
All kidding aside, its time for us to pay some bills ...
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Since today is "turkey day," I figured it would be appropriate
if we talked about the *REAL* turkeys of the Internet: the
"spammers." On the Internet, the word "spam" has two meanings:
1. A canned luncheon meat with the shelf life of gravel, and
2. Inappropriate e-mail letters, oftentimes advertisements,
that are sent to hundreds of thousands of people on the
Internet.
If you want a good overview of the second definition, I recommend
that you take a look at ROADMAP workshop lesson 9 (Spamming and
Urban Legends). You can retrieve this lesson for free by sending
an e-mail letter to
LISTSERV@UA1VM.UA.EDU
with the command
GET MAP09 LESSON F=MAIL
in the body of your e-mail letter. Lesson 9 gives you a little
longer definition of what a spam is, and it also tells you what
you should do if you ever see a spam.
There are two types of "spams": deliberate spams which
are mostly advertisements that are posted to thousands
of LISTSERV lists and Usenet newsgroups, and inadvertent
spams which are e-mail letters that sound true and which
readers decide to forward to all of their friends.
The inadvertent spams are the hardest to spot, because they
seem to be legitimate. Here are some of the most prevalent
inadvertent spams on the Net today:
THE BRAIN TUMOR BOY
MYTH: A child dying of a brain tumor wants to get
into the Guiness Book of World Records for
having the most business cards/ post cards/
get well cards sent to him.
TRUTH: The boy's name is Craig Shergold, he is alive
and well (the tumor is gone), he made it into
the Book of World Records years ago, and he
DOESN'T WANT ANY MORE DARNED CARDS!!
This would be an innocent story, but a while
back someone decided to change the story so
that instead of asking that the cards be sent
directly to Craig (in England) they should instead
be sent to the Make-a-Wish foundation. So now,
Make-a-Wish (an organization that grants the
dying wish of children with terminal diseases)
is being flooded with cards for a child that
is no longer sick and who doesn't need or want
any more cards.
In my honest opinion, considering the damage
that this spam is causing to the mailroom at
Make-a-Wish, the BRAIN TUMOR BOY is the cruelest,
sickest, spam on the Internet today.
THE GOOD TIMES VIRUS
MYTH: E-mail letters that have the words "GOOD TIMES"
in their subject lines actually contain viruses.
TRUTH: Its a lie (but you should still never launch a
program or file (especially a Microsoft Word file)
that you receive from anyone without first checking
that program or file with an up-to-date virus
checker).
THE $250 COOKIE RECIPE
MYTH: A person is charged "two-fifty" for a cookie
recipe, he thinks that "two-fifty" is $2.50,
and he decides to get revenge by sending
the recipe to everyone he can.
TRUTH: Its a lie, and the cookies suck.
MAKE.MONEY.FAST/WITH FAITH (OR SEX) ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE
MYTH: By forwarding an e-mail letter to 5, 10, or
20 of your closest friends within 96 hours,
you will make $50,000 a month, become really
lucky, or "become REALLY lucky."
TRUTH: #1) These are the Internet's version of chain
letters. They are not legitimate, and their
claims are totally false.
#2) Most Internet service providers have explicit
rules prohibiting chain letters. If you decide
to forward a chain letter to your friends and
someone complains to your service provider's
postmaster, there is a pretty good chance that
your service provider may limit or even cancel
your Internet account.
#3) Most Net "gurus" (including me) respond to
chain letters by forwarding the letters (along
with really angry replies) to the sender's
postmaster.
#4) Forwarding a chain letter to a LISTSERV list
or Usenet newsgroup under the assumption that
"the chain letter said that if I forward the
letter to 10 people I will become lucky -- so
sending the letter to a list with 2,000 subscribers
will make me REALLY lucky" is foolish, and is
a really great way to get yourself banned from
that list for the remainder of your life.
With that said, if you want to see what each of these spams actually
looks like, you should check out
http://www.suck.com/dynasuck/95/11/15/
We'll talk about www.suck.com next week, but this page gives you links
to everything you could ever want to know about spam (both the "meat"
and the net abuse). This page also has a special feature that allows
you to spam yourself :)
Finally, to protect yourself against accidentally spamming the net,
remember this one simple rule: if you receive an e-mail letter
that asks you to forward the letter to others, the only person
that you should forward it to is the sender's postmaster.
TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORD OF THE DAY
--------------------------------
JU-HERE - a question.
Usage: "Juhere that former Dallas Cowboys' coach Jimmy Johnson
recently toured the University of Alabama?"
(Special thanks goes to my dad, the Rev. Bob "Bob" Crispen,
for today's wurd).
======================================================================
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TOURBUS riders - you get a 25% discount on HelpLine's Internet 1-2-3
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Visit HelpLine on the Web at
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Make sure to specify "TOURBUS" as your discount referral id.
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TOURBUS - (c) Copyright 1995, Patrick Crispen and Bob Rankin
All rights reserved. Redistribution is allowed only with permission.
(\__/) .~ ~. ))
/O O ./ .' Patrick Douglas Crispen
{O__, \ { pcrispe1@ua1vm.ua.edu
/ . . ) \ The University of Alabama
|-| '-' \ } )) http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~crispen/crispen.html
.( _( )_.'
'---.~_ _ _& Warning: squirrels.
