Persistent spam campaign on WP.com right now

~ Inquisitor

One of my XBMC posts is continually being hit by someone posting identical spam messages: the text of the post consists entirely of

<a></a>

i.e. a blank anchor. Akismet doesn’t detect this and WordPress’ blank post filter obviously doesn’t hit it, so for a time these posts were getting through to actual comments page. This is basically designed to have their name hyperlink to one of a series of semi-randomly named .biz domains which, incredibly, don’t have DNS right now. Each message is being posted by a different IP from various consumer DSL IPs around the world, so almost certainly a botnet; I am getting an identical post once every two-three hours. I’ve heard that this is how a lot of scumware purveyors work right now – send out the spam, appears blank to start with, and then have the domains pointing at various botnet servers triggering the conversion of more machines into botnet servers.

I have added this blank anchor tag into my moderation list, but can’t bring myself to put it into the automatic blackhole list (because it is a genuine mistake people can make), so it’s merely downgraded from visible to you to just an annoyance for me. I would recommend other wordpress.com bloggers do the same until Akismet fix it.

Oh, come on

~ Inquisitor ~ 4 Comments

Now I’ve bashed the PS3 as much as anyone, but finally here we have something that Sony doesn’t deserve to be blamed for:

Cathedral row over computer game (BBC News, 9th June 2007)

The Church of England is considering legal action against entertainment firm Sony for featuring Manchester Cathedral in a violent Playstation computer game.

The Church says Sony did not obtain permission to use the interior in the war game Resistance: Fall of Man.

No, and nor should they have.

The game is an apparently flawed, war-based FPS set in an alternate (that is, not real) 1950s where what are either aliens or a biological experiment gone wrong are invading the West, spreading virally. Let’s emphasise that this is not real. Since your objective is to win the war, using ground-based resistance tactics, this of course means that you battle in real-world locations like churches, just like in every other war. That’s what war is.

And forgetting this context, they then make a very horrible comparison:

The Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Revd Nigel McCulloch, described the decision to feature the city’s cathedral as “highly irresponsible” – especially in the light of Manchester’s history of gun crime.

“It is well known that Manchester has a gun crime problem,” he said.

“For a global manufacturer to re-create one of our great cathedrals with photo-realistic quality and then encourage people to have guns battles in the building is beyond belief and highly irresponsible.

For a start, Sony didn’t write Resistance – it was developed by Insomniac Games, the people who came up with Spyro the Dragon, and merely distributed by Sony on their console. Secondly, it’s from what I hear not actually a recreation of the cathedral – it’s a model whose outside look is based on it but internally is fairly different (unsurprisingly, as it’s being destroyed by the enemy when you turn up). And, most importantly, exactly what the hell has Manchester’s gun crime problem got to do with a fantasy game set in an alternate 1950s where you play a resistance member fighting a last-ditch battle against an alien invader?

If Resistance was the British-set equivalent of the 50 Cent game they might have a point, but it’s not and the press should be ashamed at this comparison. It is not encouraging street crime, it is fantasy. Churches are fine to be used offensively in all other media – only a few weeks ago, Doctor Who’s “Lazarus Experiment” episode featured a denouement set in a cathedral, and I didn’t hear any of this lot complaining then – so why not much the same thing in a game?

And besides, they don’t have a leg to stand on over the image issue anyway, legally; buildings are there. It would be like the New York tourism department raising hell because I put a destroyed Statue of Liberty in a counter-terrorism game which, as per Deus Ex, they didn’t do. Hell, it would be much the same as a church complaining about the type of church-based deathmatch level that’s turned up in pretty much every World War II FPS ever made (I played it a lot in one of the variants of Medal of Honour), but they don’t.

Note also that this game has been out since November – it was a PS3 launch title, and as a result sold well because amongst the launch titles only it and Motorstorm were in any way decent (they’ve now been joined by Oblivion, but that’s still pretty much it if you don’t count PS2 games) – and the controversy has only started now. Have the gutter press got tired of Big Brother already?

Brilliant scheduling from BBC Four

~ Inquisitor ~ 1 Comment

On tonight, Saturday 9th June 2007:

  • Alice Cooper: Welcome To My Nightmare – “the classic 70s concert” (10:10pm-11:30pm)
  • Iron Maiden: Rock In Rio (11:30pm-12:30am)
  • Journeys Into the Ring Of Fire – “Iain Stewart tours the perilous and spectacular landscape of the Pacific Rim to discover how the rocks beneath our feet have shaped human history.” (12:30am-closedown).

So that’s hard rock followed by hard rocks. Brilliant.

Error messages of our times: #1

~ Inquisitor

iTunes error message

Today was the day of the iTunes Plus launch. It’s a silly name for a great idea – an easy to use, consumer designed music download service without the DRM hassle, downloading nice enough bitrate AAC files for decent enough prices (especially on certain box sets, the famous iTunes loophole). Sadly, it seems like they’ve underestimated demand somewhat. Currently the iTunes search engine is screwed, returning no results for queries where I know the artist in question is on the ITMS (like The Knife), but audio clips are playing perfectly fine if very slowly. And the service is cutting in and out with errors like the one to the right; I’ve never used ITMS before, but I doubt that’s normal.

It’s amazing what being customer centred can do for your potential audience, isn’t it?

Edit: Noticed a neat DRM-free bargain: Wire’s Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154 all-in for £10.99. Even though they’ve apparently confused the latter two, this is an absolute bargain compared to what these sell for in the shops.

Support Rachel North – find her stalker

~ Inquisitor ~ 4 Comments

Have you seen this woman? If so, call the cops.

Felicity Jane Lowde is a convicted cyberstalker on the run (old photo on the right). She’s been continually harassing, libelling, threatening and making false accusations against Rachel North, for no obvious reason. Backstory here and here. Anyway, she’s skipped bail and is somehow continuing her harassment campaign while on the loose (and possibly while living rough). If you regularly frequent cybercafes or libraries in the London or Oxford areas, you might see her.

If you do see her, please contact the police, do not approach. Useful telephone numbers follow:

  • Crimestoppers: 0800 555 111
  • Metropolitan Police: 020 7230 1212
  • City of London Police: 020 7601 2222 (within the Square Mile only)
  • Thames Valley Police (Oxford): 0845 8505 505

[Update 10.07.2007: Since FJL has now been found, I have removed her photograph. No need to look for her any more – let’s hope she gets the help she needs now. This post will remain as an archive.]

Hidden in the Celebrity Big Brother transcripts…

~ Inquisitor ~ 3 Comments

…is a gem. (26-page PDF, courtesy the Guardian.)

To summarise: Jade and her just-as-thick brother [Ed: AAARGH, mental classification screwup] boyfriend, Jack Tweed, Jo S Club and Danielle Lloyd played a very childish party game of “make up limericks about Shilpa” which involved trying to avoid a word that apparently rhymed with “tacky” and began with the letter P. Mostly it’s just as dull as Big Brother’s always been, but the interesting bit is how (a) none of this got to air and (b) the details of how Channel Four tried to cover it up.

Oddly, the game itself is not included in the transcript [Ed: wrote this before I realised it was on p5 and forgot to remove it, grr], but two of the warning interviews are: the one I’m interested in is the one with Jade’s brother bf:

Saturday 20th January 2007 approx. 20:20 – DIARY ROOM WITH JACK TWEED (p.18-26)

Jack: Hello.
Big Brother: Hello, Jack.
Jack: Hello.
Big Brother: Jack, please could you switch off your microphone and take the battery out, please? You should know that you are still being recorded.
Jack: Done
Big Brother: Thanks.

[…]

Big Brother: You were using rhyming slang to replace what you called ‘the “P” word’.
Jack: Okay.
Big Brother: You said the word rhymed with ‘tacky’.
Jack: Okay
Big Brother: It is clear to Big Brother, Jack, that this was a reference to the racial insult ‘Paki’.
Jack: Okay.
Big Brother: Do you understand that this is considered racially offensive language?
Jack: Yeah, okay.
Big Brother: What do you have to say about this, Jack?
Jack: I was explaining the word that someone that was meant to have rhymed with the word. I
wasn’t actually saying the word.
Big Brother: Do you mean you were trying to include the word in the limerick but were using another
word to replace it?
Jack: I can’t really remember what exactly happened but I think… that someone said ‘I know a word that rhymes with that’ and then I clocked on to what it was and then explained what the word was, but didn’t actually say the word.

Genius.

There then entails a long series of questions determining where they were playing the game, and then on p22…

Big Brother: Jack, do you understand that the ‘P’ word – Paki –
Jack: Yeah.
Big Brother: Is considered to be racist?
Jack: Yeah, I fully understand.
Big Brother: And that simply by replacing the word with a word that rhymes with it doesn’t take away from the racial insult?
Jack: I wasn’t saying it to anyone. I was explaining what the word… what the word is. That’s why, in a conversation, you’re allowed to say, ‘The word “Paki” is a racist remark’. That’s why you’re allowed to say it. So I wasn’t saying, ‘That girl is a Paki’; I was saying ‘the word is that’.

Oh, I’m sure. These people are just as appalling on paper as they are in real life, aren’t they?

What’s really interesting about this is the style of the questioning. This interview is asking very short, simple, almost primary-school level questions, whereas the questioning of Jo S Club is much more detailed and inquiring (and she gives better game, too.) Is this an assumption that Big Brother is making directly of the Goody/Tweed family, almost talking down to them in much the same way they seem to think Shilpa was talking down to them?

Big Brother: Jack, was the limerick about Shilpa?
Jack: I think… I really can’t remember. I think so. I don’t know.
Big Brother: Jack, Big Brother is going to remind you of the limerick.
Jack: Okay.
Big Brother: Jo began: ‘There once was a house that was happy’. You then said: ‘Until…’ Jo said: ‘And then there entered…’ Cleo then interrupted and said, ‘You are all going to [Big Brother] prison’.

That’s actually a brilliant one-liner – the conversation in question is on p5-6 if you’re interested. Excellent timing from Cleo Rocos there. Watch out for Jack’s grammatical howler:

Jack: Yeah. So that wasn’t referring to the word ‘Paki’. That was just people who was tacky.
Big Brother: Jack, in a previous conversation, you had substituted the word ‘tacky’ for the word ‘Paki’.
Jack: In that limerick just then, I wasn’t at all suggesting that the word was meant to be ‘Paki’. I was saying tacky, as in tacky people. I wasn’t – not at all.

He’s got a bit of a cheek calling Shilpa Shetty tacky considering exactly how tacky the Goody/Tweed family are – Jade herself spent a lot of the time before stupidly deciding to go on BB again making low-rent, truly dreadful reality programming for LivingTV (“Britain’s Most Popular CSI Repeats And Psychic Bullshit Channel”) with titles like “Jade’s Salon” and “Jade’s PA”. Making exploitative reality TV that no-one watches has to qualify as tacky even by their perspective, surely?

Big Brother: Jack, do you understand that some people may consider what you said to be racially offensive?
Jack: Yeah, some people who got the wrong end of the stick, I would, yeah. Can I just ask: is this… What, is this out in the paper, because if it is, I’d rather just leave now.

And Jack gets pretty much straight to the heart of the matter here, which is really quite surprising. Big Brother is tiptoeing around the issue but this is the only reason he’s being questioned about it – because news of the “Shilpa Poppadom” incident had already got out and C4 was worrying that this would get out too.

(In fact – although this is from memory, not my email archive so could be unreliable – news had got out through the usual Popbitch-type channels that Channel Four had material showing Jade et al making racist comments and had covered it up. Because it was from Popbitch et al, it wasn’t taken seriously. Now, of course, we know that this was true.)

Big Brother: Jack, as a result of this incident, Big Brother is now issuing you with your first and only formal warning about this.
Jack: Okay.
Big Brother: Any further incidents could result in your immediate eviction.
Jack: Okay. Could I just… Can you just please tell me if this is out in the paper or anything like that, if anything’s out there suggesting, because if it is, I’d rather just leave now.

At least he realises he’s made a major boner and wants to stop making them – which is more than can be said for a lot of people.

Big Brother: Jack, just listen for a second.
Jack: Okay.
Big Brother: Big Brother would ask that you exercise some care in the future with your language.
Jack: Yeah.
Big Brother: And Big Brother would like to remind you that, as always, all diary room conversations between Big Brother and housemates are confidential.
Jack: Okay.
Big Brother: Do you understand?
Jack: Yeah. Thank you.

The implication here of course is “don’t speak about this ever again and you’ll be fine.”

What this transcript shows is that all along C4 had the power to control the events on BB, editing out this limerick incident (which happened at around half eleven on the 16th of January, the same day as the cooking incident that triggered the press furore) from even the E4 live transmission and similarly keeping the official reprimand out of public view. Very interesting in its own way to watch how they were all manipulated for the camera – so much for BB reflecting real life then.

The sponsors for this season by the way? Virgin Media. My cable company. Who, through their ownership of Living TV, make all that psychic bullshit and Jade-featuring reality shows (although of course they don’t feature Jade anymore, they’ve got Pete Burns in instead.) Aaargh, not impressed – with that and the service I’m getting, I think I might soon be giving BT a call.

Sent to my university email box…

~ Inquisitor ~ 3 Comments

A customised “scholarship award” 419 scam! Let’s deconstruct it, shall we…

FROM: THE DESK OF THE VICE PRESIDENT MR.AUSTIN THOMAS.(TRANSNATIONAL
AWARD INTERNATIONAL) PRIZE AWARD DEPT.
REF NO: 12/0078/IPG
BATCH NO: EGS/ 20054117/08

Generated randomly, probably.

ATTN: WINNER.

RE: SCHOLARSHIP AWARD NOTIFICATION, FINAL NOTICE.

We are pleased to inform you, that as a result of our RECENT LOTTERY DRAWS HELD ON THE 28TH DECEMBER 2006. Your e-mail address attached to ticket number:021-7276083-04 with serial number:31270-0 drew lucky numbers:05-06-12-14-38 which consequently won in the 5th category. You have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay of (FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND US DOLLARS) in cash credited to file with REF:.EGS/3662367114/13

Oh, look, is that a different random batch number? Note the amateurish nature of the scam. I’m amazed anyone gets taken in by these things, but they do.

Note that all participants in this lottery program have been selected randomly through a computer ballot system drawn from over 20,000 Officials and 30,000,000 individual email addresses from all search engines and web sites,from Asia, Australia, NewZealand, Europe, North and South America, Middle East and Africa, as part of our International Promotions Program.This promotional program takes place every year, and is promoted and sponsored by eminent personalities like the Sultan of Brunei and other corporate organizations. This is to IMPROVE THE LEVEL O!
F EDUCATION WORLDWIDE and to ENCOURAGE THE USE OF INTERNET AND COMPUTERS WORLDWIDE.

“30,000,000 individual email addresses” obviously means “dictionary attack on .edu and .ac.uk”. This appears to be a fill-in-the-blank lotto scam – with the reasons for it just entered in by the scammer in particular depending on his run. Also, that O!<carriage return>F is in the actual email. Brilliant.

Your fund is now deposited with EcoBank and insured in your name For security purpose and clarity, we advise that you keep your winning information confidential until your claims have been processed and your money remitted to your account.

Nah, I don’t think I’m going to do that.

This is part of our security protocol to avoid double claims and unwarranted abuse of this program by some participants. We look forward to your active participation in our next 4 million dollars slot.

This of course is the hook for the scam – there’s 4M available if you phone in. Shame the scam’s so bloody obvious, and the hook is too well hidden in the long paragraphs.

To begin the processing of your prize you are to contact your claims agent through our accredited Prize Transfer agents as stated below:

Name..Rev Paul Edward

Oh, a “reverend”. How trustworthy.

TEL: +234-80-3819 1724 CALL HIM IMMEDIATELY WITH HIS ABOVE DIRECT PHONE NUMBER IF YOU ARE CALLING FROM (USA) THIS IS HOW YOU DIAL 011-234-80-3819 1724 BUT IF YOU ARE CALLING FROM ANY OTHER COUNTRY,THIS IS HOW TO DIAL +234-80-3819 1724

They obviously think we’re that dumb that we don’t know how to dial an international number. Oh, and +234 is, of course, the international calling code for Nigeria; it is a mobile phone on the MTN Nigeria network.

Googling on the telephone number for the scammer has cropped up someone on Livejournal who’s received the scam from the same people; the name given in his scam email is “Rev Frank Ive”.

You are also advised to provide your claim agent with the under listed information as soon as possible send it to his two email addresses below,YOUR CLAIM AGENT E MAIL ADDRESSES BELOW,

E MAIL: pauledward1616@yahoo.com
E MAIL: pauledward555@myway.com

The same email providers were used for Frank Ive, presumably because these are the easiest free email providers to automate account creation for (and slowest to terminate people for 419 scamming.)

1. Name in full
2. Address
3. Nationality
4. Age
5. Occupation
6. Phone/Fax
7. Batch Number
8. Serial Number

All winnings must be claimed not later than one month after the date of this notice. Please note,in order to avoid unnecessary delays and complications,remember to quote your Batch number and Serial numbers in all orrespondence.Furthermore,should there be any change of address do inform our agent as soon as possible.Congratulations!!!once more and thank you for being part of our promotional program. Bear in mind that 10% of your fund will be going to the lottery organization that played the lottery with peoples name and email addresses that should be after you most have received the fund in your account,the 10% would have been given to them,just because the fund has been insured and will not be removed till you receive the fund in your account.

This of course is the trick to confuse people into not reporting their scamming until it’s way, way too late. Oh, and “orrespondence”? Tee hee.

Sincerely,

MR.AUSTIN THOMAS
VICE PRESIDENT.
TRANSNATIONAL AWARD

The same name was used on the Livejournal recipient’s mail too.

So what we’ve got here is a scam that is cleverly targeted but still misses the mark by a very long distance, not least because it got picked up by my university’s SpamAssassin system and was marked with a spam warning, but also because of what it lacks in spelling, grammar, good sense and layout. The question of course is why so many people get stung by 419 scams after this long and why they are allowed to just keep on going. It’s the money, isn’t it?

Telemarketers, scum of the earth

~ Inquisitor ~ 4 Comments

I’ve just been called for “market research” again and am frustrated to find out that the TPS complaints form requires you to find out the name and address of the scumbag who’s tried to call you (I have no doubt that if I actually trawled for such information, they’d hang up on me.) Since I hang up immediately on all such calls, I don’t have it – however, they did leave their number on 1471.

So, whatever firm of “market research” droids it is at 0870 220 9317 ignores the TPS. And is probably responsible for my silent calls and recorded message telespam too.

It’s nowhere on Google and I’m not going to call it (it’s the principle of the thing, I’m not paying call charges just to talk to them again and I recommend no-one else does the same), but if anyone on the ‘net has any more information about who owns this I would appreciate it greatly. There used to be a page somewhere listing 0870 numbers by the licensing operator; I can’t find it again, but if it’s still there it would be very useful for hunting these pricks down.

Eurovision 2007 – “we deserved nul points” edition

~ Inquisitor

But sadly Ireland (7pts) and Malta (the full twelve) rescued Scooch from total ignominy. Of course, we didn’t give Ireland any points in return so I bet they’re regretting that now.

We had the worst song. Even that Ukrainian drag act, the French’s inexplicable Parisian routine and the Latvian’s Il Divo clone were better than ours. Only the Irish stereotype number dragged itself to our level. Sure, Cyndi wouldn’t have won either, but we’d probably have ended up closer to mid table. (Much as it pains me to say it, the Big Brovaz number would probably have done best out of our lot – generoballads didn’t do well this year.)

This was my Twitter reaction when watching:

  • 21:21:26: Much as it it pains me to say this, this is our entry: Scooch, with “Flying The Flag (For You)”.
  • 21:22:34: At least they’re in tune. They’ve never managed it before.
  • 21:23:15: They’ve kept the godawful salted-nuts type puns in, which are *dreadful*.
  • 21:24:12: Oh God. “Pleasurable journey” with crotch movements. Why couldn’t this not have been our entry?
  • 21:24:45: And here it comes, the worst pun of all – “suck on for landing”. NUL… POINTS! NUL… POINTS!

It was a poor joke to begin with, and the godawful tuneless “would you like something to suck on?” bits sealed it; people just ended up confused about what they were watching. What was worse was that it didn’t have a tune – to pick up those Europeans who don’t understand English innuendo (like Lithuania’s “We Are The Winners Of Eurovision” song did last year – it ended up coming sixth). They grated in Making Your Mind Up, and I thought they were awful then; this was magnified when I saw clips of their out-of-tune rehearsals on news programmes and boosted to all new levels when I saw the final performance.

Peter Sissons on News 24 had to try and keep his obvious dislike of the song and disbelief that it was our entry out of his speech pattern when introducing the pre-contest reports; he failed miserably. He wasn’t the only one – Wogan at one point pointed out that “we deserve to come bottom four”, whilst complaining about “bloc voting”.

In fact, what’s interesting is that we’ve had eleven different winners for eleven contests since 1996 and telephone voting: including us (1997), Ireland (1996), Sweden (1999), Denmark (2000), Greece (2005) and Finland (2006) – all of which at least “think” Western Europe. That pretty much in itself disproves the Eastern Bloc voting theory – they may well all vote for each other, but that’s because they like the same sort of music and, what’s more, it’s not enough to win.

What wins is a song that people like. People liked Lordi. People liked the Serbian song this year: and, let’s face it, her song winning completely disproves the theory that people vote for Eurovision entries based on style. And the Ukrainian entry outdid us on comedy value – it actually felt hand-wrought and endearingly batty, while the Scooch song just felt like it was built on a camp assembly line. One of the men in the ‘band’ is a presenter on one of those Quiz Scam channels to pay the bills, and it’s that personality that came off the screen – made to a template of smarm.

People hated Scooch, hated Daz Sampson and hated everything we’ve put in since Katrina and the Waves. And I think it’s because they know that by putting that kind of entry in Eurovision, we’re patronising them – we think of Eurovision entries as if it was 1997, not 2007. They might not be very good at English lyrics but they have the same slick pop production values as us – if the Pet Shop Boys or Xenomania or Richard X were to produce a number for a Eurovision contender this year, they might at least have a chance. Hell, we should just get Robbie Williams to enter, he’s our most well known pop star on the Continent.

But this year’s Making Your Mind Up consisted entirely of washed-up failures and people who shouldn’t have been there – we’re looking third rate, but Eurovision demands first rate now (or at least a decent ripoff of first rate). It needs to change. Let’s have an entry we can be proud of for 2008 – we deserve one.

Eurovision 2007 – They’re not flying the flag for me!

~ Inquisitor ~ 2 Comments

So there’s the worst British entry to Eurovision for a very long time and a whole crowd of Eastern Europeans. Oh well, should be fun to watch. 25 minutes and counting – you may find my liveblogging results over at my Twitter for the time being (since Twitter’s a lot faster to update than wordpress.com is and is much more suited to a liveblog style.) I’ll be checking these comments and the DVD Forums too. Will Scooch sing as out of tune as they sound at the rehearsals? Will we get points? Do we deserve to? And will there be a surprise? Stay tuned!

Also liveblogging: All About Latvia (they linked to me so I’ll link to them.)