{"id":26,"date":"2005-02-06T03:36:28","date_gmt":"2005-02-06T03:36:28","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2015-01-28T11:41:11","modified_gmt":"2015-01-28T11:41:11","slug":"the_irony_of_spam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.snoopdos.com\/blog\/the_irony_of_spam\/","title":{"rendered":"The irony of spam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During the week, I received what purported to be a legitimate email from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eircom.net\/\">Eircom.net&nbsp;Sales<\/a>. Surprisingly, it arrived at my business address, which is not registered with Eircom.<\/p>\n<p>On closer analysis, it had several hallmarks of a spam <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/athome\/security\/email\/phishing.mspx\">phishing expedition<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>None of the inline HTML images displayed correctly<\/li>\n<li>The sender&#8217;s actual (hidden) email address was directsales@nbnyfo.eyxglo.r.12hs.com even though the message was apparently from Eircom.net sales<\/li>\n<li>At the bottom of the email was a polite &#8220;To unsubscribe, please <b>click here<\/b>&#8220;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(A common tactic with spammers is to offer an unsubscribe link in the hope that unhappy recipients will follow it, thus confirming that the email address is read by a real human. That email address can then be sold to other spam merchants for a significant premium over unverified email addresses.)<\/p>\n<p>Although I knew they wouldn&#8217;t be able to do anything about it, I figured Eircom.net might be interested to know that someone was sending out emails on their behalf, so I forwarded a copy of the offending email to <a href=\"mailto:abuse@eircom.net\">abuse@eircom.net<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Rather annoyingly, this resulted in an automated reply telling me to report the problem using <a href=\"http:\/\/support.eircom.net\/abuse\/\">http:\/\/support.eircom.net\/abuse\/<\/a> instead. I wouldn&#8217;t have minded, except that page didn&#8217;t give enough space to report the problem in as much detail as I&#8217;d have liked. Still, I did my best.<\/p>\n<p>Imagine my surprise when a day or so later, I received a message back from Eircom Support telling me that in fact, the message was completely legitimate. 12hs.com is apparently <a href=\"http:\/\/www.12hs.com\/\">Twelve Horses<\/a>, a direct marketing company that Eircom have employed.<\/p>\n<p>And the subject of this direct marketing? Eircom were promoting their new secure business email service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During the week, I received what purported to be a legitimate email from Eircom.net&nbsp;Sales. Surprisingly, it arrived at my business address, which is not registered with Eircom. On closer analysis, it had several hallmarks of a spam phishing expedition: None of the inline HTML images displayed correctly The sender&#8217;s actual (hidden) email address was directsales@nbnyfo.eyxglo.r.12hs.com &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.snoopdos.com\/blog\/the_irony_of_spam\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The irony of spam<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.snoopdos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.snoopdos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.snoopdos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.snoopdos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.snoopdos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.snoopdos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158,"href":"http:\/\/www.snoopdos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions\/158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.snoopdos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.snoopdos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.snoopdos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}