{"id":169,"date":"2004-01-07T23:14:35","date_gmt":"2004-01-07T23:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/?p=169"},"modified":"2004-01-07T23:14:35","modified_gmt":"2004-01-07T23:14:35","slug":"fun_with_spam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/?p=169","title":{"rendered":"Fun with spam"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the last few days, I’ve started receiving some spam e-mails that I actually don’t mind very much, because they make me laugh. Most spam messages have ordinary-sounding names in the “From:” field, probably taken from some big-city phone book. But this latest crop of spam is using a different method. The program that sends the messages is generating very silly sender names by randomly picking two words from a dictionary and inserting a middle initial between them. As a result, yesterday I received spam e-mails from Modules H. Zip, Avenue H. Scrimshaws, and Lithographer H. Draftsman.
\nNoticing that all three names have the same middle initial, I concluded that the name generator always uses H. But I was wrong. Today I got another of these messages, and it was from Downplay G. Brokerage. Maybe it uses a different middle initial every day? I can’t be sure without more samples. Hopefully I’ll receive some more tomorrow. Good grief! I never thought the day would come when I would actually look forward<\/em> to receiving more spam.
\nUPDATE: Another one arrived while I was writing this post! It’s from Subcontinent V. Marquises. I’m glad I wasn’t trying to drink anything when I read that name — I would be wiping the beverage off my screen right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last few days, I’ve started receiving some spam e-mails that I actually don’t mind very much, because they make me laugh. Most spam messages have ordinary-sounding names in the “From:” field, probably taken from some big-city phone book. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}