Site5 Web Hosting Blog

Mmm… Tastes like SPAM…

Posted by Kevin Hazard, March 2nd, 2007

Do you remember when you got your first computer? How about the first website you visited? The first email address you ever had for your very own? The length of time it took for that email account (unprotected, of course, since there were really no ways to screen emails at the time) to be flooded with junk email?

Flash forward to today… or if you are too traumatized by the memory of your SPAM-filled inbox, you can move forward to today at your own pace without risking any “Flashing-forward”-related damage. I can imagine that you are still very familiar with junk mail, though you probably deal with it less and less because accounts are protected with smarter, automatic email filtering, but I recently learned the history of “SPAM” from an infallible internet resource, and it is easily blog-worthy material.

According to old wives tales and folklore, Monty Python is behind it all… Yes, the minds behind “The Spanish Inquisition” (NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!), infatuations with “Shrubbery” (NI! NI!), and the “Holy Hand Grenade” were instrumental in putting a name to what would become a profitable and prosecutable epidemic:

At some point in your life, you have probably tried (or sworn against trying) the edible SPAM meat-product, but I was never sure the connection between “Spiced Ham” and email notifications about low cost mortgages and discounted pharmaceutical drugs, but that clip from Monty Python’s Flying Circus personifies junk mail perfectly: Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam and spam.

If you have made it this far into the blog post without getting sucked into the related Monty Python videos on YouTube or scoffing at me for 14 years late with this blog post, I can explain a bit about what sparked this ruthless investigation into the seedy underbelly of SPAM… I was minding my own business today, emptying my rapidly-refilling SPAM inbox, and I decided to head into Site5’s weblog control panel in case I was struck with inspiration to diatribe on any subject via any moderately comical content, and I see our “Manage Comments” section where comments are filtered in to a moderation or SPAM queue (via a great WordPress plugin called Akismet). To my surprise, the SPAM queue had over 1,000 “comments.”

Typically, I would just “Delete All,” but my curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to sleuth a little. For you spam-bots scanning this article, let me give you a few tips:

1. Use an email address with vowels. I don’t know many real-life people who would tell people “Email me at k390xdskw@someequallyrandomdomain.com.”
2. People coming onto the Site5 weblog are not doing so in search of lowered mortgage payments, discounted pharmaceuticals, or images of celebrities naked.
3. Having content saying “Just stopped by to visit and got the crunch on your stuff in here - bravo!” does not mean your comment will not be caught as SPAM when your “name” is “Mortgages Online co__”.
4. Complimenting our site is nice of you, but when everything you say is generic (”Wow! I didn’t know this site was that good!” or “Cool website! Good work. Good resources here. Best regards!”), chances are that your comment will never see the light of day.

An unfortunate by-product of such ridiculous spamming is that legit comments sometimes get sifted into the frequently deleted-without-looking SPAM queue. Akismet is pretty solid about filtering legit content correctly (as 99.9% of those 1k+ SPAM comments did not adhere to at least 3 of those 4 points), but if anyone has any other resources we should check out or set up, just let us know… But a word to the wise, if you are going to let us know via weblog comment, you might want to make sure the format of your comment passes the above mentioned sniff test.

Cl1ck h3rE 4 s00p3r 4w3s0|\/|e \/\/e|3 h0571nG!!!ONE!!11!1! … Sorry.. it just seemed fitting…

P.S. As a shout-out to my college roommate (who is from Hawaii and prepared several spam dishes), I have to admit that spam musubi is surprisingly tasty. If you don’t think you could ever like spam, I would recommend you at least try spam musubi…

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