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Week 4 [06-12.11.2017] This is what happens when you reply to spam email.


James Veitch is a British comedian. In today’s Ted Talk James with characteristic for himself a sense of humor shows how he deals with spam emails and why responding to junk messages may be sometimes dangerous.

Questions:

  1. What do you think about James’s way of dealing with spam?
  2. Why are junk messages legal, even though it sometimes may be a fraud?
  3. Dou you have a problem with spam? How do you deal with with it?

Comments

Anonymous said…
Haha that you for this doze of humor for today :D I really loved this video!
I think James is doing really well and gives people a lot of fun. But on the other hand - he said he is just wasting their time, but he wastes his time as well.
Well, spam is legal because the size of Internet is so big that no one could ever verify every e-mail. On the other hand you could ask why talking with people is legal - someone might deceive you as well. Those things happen and we can't do anything.
Sometime ago I was so fed up with spam that I needed to change my mail. Now I use gmail as my personal mail and I don't need to deal with spam anymore.
Unknown said…
I really like his way of dealing with spam, it is very funny but if we are considering it as a way of dealing with spam for longer period of time it would be huge waste of time. I think that there is no physically way of controlling emails to make SPAM illegal. We can only try to filter it and be aware of dangerous that stands behind it. Personally, I don’t have problem with SPAM because I’m using Gmail account and it has in-built spam filter which even differentiates category of SPAM so I only have to mark one category and press ‘delete’ from time to time.
Unknown said…
Haha great idea. But I see big problem with using this way to get rid of spam from my email. They send most of these mails automatically. I think they don't answer all mails they receive. For sure they won't write back in code I create. In general I don't have any problems with spam. My mail can handle it. If I'm tired of some website, I stop subscription and problem disappears.
It looks like James is hero that we need, not deserve. To be serious, I'm also fed up with spam and just like you I'm using Gmail. I think that Gmails anti-spam filterers are one of worlds best, that is probably why mentioned email domain is so popular.
Despite being super funny, James shows something a little bit terrifying in my opinion - spam can be really harmful. For people that are quite familiar with IT, spam is a scam that can be easily found or filtered. When it comes to older generation like my parents, spam can be really dangerous, for example money feuding. Btw, I'm also using Gmail, it is probably best email option available at the moment.
You, like most people from our generation, can deal with spam. When it comes to people that are a little bit older, situation becomes totally different. Not all email platforms have build in antispam filter. There is also other problem - what message can be called spam? Mails shown at the video are spam of course, moreover those messages may be called phishing - a method of money fraud that depend on faking real institutions like banks ( creating fake website, fake certification etc.). In my opinion every time Dominos Pizza or Apple sends an email about new product may be counted as spam. Most notification from Facebook or other social websites also is some kind of spam. As you and some other people above said, choosing good email platform is first and most important step in dealing with spam.
Unknown said…
Is this a TED talk, or a stand up routine? I mean, it was hilarious - but I didn't really get anything from it other than "replying to spam is funny"
I'm sorry to hear that you have not enjoyed this video as much as others. It was not only a comedian show, James has shown some possible threats in spam mails. Replaying to spam is funny, if you are James, otherwise it can be really dangerous.
This video was hilarious! I think James did an amazing job showing how ridiculous those spam frauds can get. Even though responding to that kind of message seems like an interesting experience I don’t think I’d ever do that. Spammers send millions of emails to addresses that can be either valid or not, replying to spam just gives them an information that your address is valid and you will only get more spam.
Yeah, I agree with you. I think that aim of this presentation was not to be like James, beacuse it is very time consuming, but to be aware that mails like that are total bullshit and potentially dangerous.
Foodocado said…
I agree with Yevhen. This speech was more like stand-up show rather than TED talk. I can't say it wasn't funny or interesting, but it's hard to believe that someone spends a lot of free time on replying for these kind of emails. For me it's a waste of time.

He should talk more about danger which comes with spam emails and how to protect ourselfs from them or which email providers are trustworthy.
1. Well, it's not the best way to deal with spam emails, but this way is one of the most funny ways to deal with any annoying things in our daily lifes.
2. It's form of advertisement. Goverments cannot cotroll all of the methods used by companies but fraud emails are illegal.
3. I have no problem with spam because all spam emails I've received are in spam folder.
Alicja said…
true, the unsolicited Dominos Pizza text messages are really annoying.

James Veitch is excellent. As a way of collecting stand-up material James' way of dealing with spam worked well but in general I believe replying to spam emails for laughs is not worth our time and the risk. Even if you anonymize yourself, you may become a target. The emails that look like plain text may turn out to include strange compression formats or encrypted files. It may not be as dangerous in GMail as it is, for example, in Outlook which has had a number of preview pane exploits, but still one should be cautious.

To the best of my knowledge it is not legal to send spam in Poland, but there is an issue with what constitutes spam. It is also not worth to sue and prosecute the spammers, because the penalties are not very high.

ONE LOVE ;)
Yevhen Shymko said…
I think its quiet specific why of spending your free time. I've watched video about communication and this is great example where content by itself can't do much. Mixed with communication skill synergy thou is completely next level.
A while back I had a problem with spam. I've got like 10-20 email a day. I tried to use filters but didn't work as well as i would like to. Thus I just abandoned that email box and created new one and tried to use it carefully.
Guys, we can not forget that James is a comedian and not a IT security expert, that is why this talked is a lot like stand up. Not all Ted talks are suposed to be life changing ;)
I see your point Michał, but you ( and most of other people here) tend to forget that there are other internet users than IT students. There is huge number of person reciving spam, not every mail domain has filrt build in. There is other question - what we call spam? Is a newsletter spam? Are messages saying that somone liked our new photo on Facebook spam? Of course most of examples given by me are easy to swtich off, but easy for us and there are ton of people that find that impossible.
If you are looking for advice there, I can recomend you website called "10/20 minutes mail". You can create an email there which will be "alive" only for 10/20 minutes. It's great tool to be used at websites that you are not likely to use in futue ( for example. you buy something somwhere as a gift) or at the websites that tend to send annoying messages about new product or sales week.
Unknown said…
Great Ted talk, very entertaining :)
1. I love his way to deal with spam, I did the same a few years ago. Now I just don't have the time anymore. As he said, wasting their time on a person that is aware is good, because they will not scam a person unaware of that in the meantime.
2. Junk e-mail is not legal, at least in the most European countries, as it is usually considered as harassment. It is usually very hard to track until it actually becomes a fraud and that is why it is so hard to stop. Of course, the frauds are not using legitimate e-mail accounts nor bank accounts, and route both their data and money through many nodes of their system. making tracking very hard. So even though it is not legal, this is the reason why it exists - it is very hard to actually suppress.
3. I do get a lot of spam, but that does not mean I have a problem with it. I have a few ways to dealing with it, the main one is mail hierarchy. That means I have many e-mail accounts that I use for different, more and less important stuff. I have a main personal account, solely for contacting trusted people. Second one is for trusted and important websites registration. Third is university e-mail for studies. Fourth is only for syncing data on mobile devices. Separate accounts for portals where I have to use a credit card, which I do not use for any kind of mailing. Then, there are a few accounts in worse portals used solely for registering on less important portals and are collecting some spam. I never check them, unless I want to verify a registration. Then, for all the non-important registrations I use portals such as 10 minute e-mail which are just temporary accounts that prevent from getting lots of spam. To sum it up, I know it is inevitable to get spam, but I can manage it, preventing getting any spam on my most important accounts by not registering these accounts anywhere. All the spam goes to mail account that are not important, so I can just ignore them :)
Vladlen Kyselov said…
I think dealing with spam is a little bit time consuming, but still very funny.
I think that`s because it is very easy to create new e-mail account and so no one will really check the content of e-mails and so we still receive them on our e-mail accounts.
I don`t have problem with spam because I always try not to subsribe to different useless news sendings and everyday i try to filter my mailbox.
Wow, you are first person that had a similar conservation like James had. It must be funny to see responds like James had shown during his presentation. What people won't do to earn money ;)?

Ok, it is not legal when you do it as a phishing. But what about mails that tells you about some great weight lose pills? Or mails that are not dangerous, but only unwanted? Of course for us IT girls and guys it's easy to handle with it, but if someone is not very familiar with computer science, it may be unpleasant.

Having multiple email accounts and using websites like "10 minutes mail" is probably the best way to deal with spam. That's what you and I do and what everybody should do.
This damn Dominos Pizza! At least their products are quite tasty.

To be serious, sometimes it's hard to say what exactly is spam. Of course all that newsletter stuff is 100%, but as we know not everything that is legal is ethically good at the same time.
I've never replied to a spam literally and I do not think we should do it. If someone have too much free time, it is possibly to troll like James did.
Yeah, using multiple email accounts and build-in anti spam filters should do the thing. Also I think that there should be some campaign for people that are not very familliar with IT, that will show how to use internet safely.
Unknown said…
That's a funny way of counter-spamming. But I've heard that somebody created bot, that do such things as James and try to communicate with scammers as long as possible.

I don't have any problems with spammers. Maybe I am just smart enough to not leave my e-mail everywhere I see.
If you are talking about a video that shows how programmer crated a bot that was calling scammers, not writing emails to them, I saw that too. Perhaps it teached them something ;)?
Unknown said…
It was a funny video, but dealing with spam this way is not a clever way to go - Its time consuming, and you are replying manually to the guy who might have sent the same message to thousands of recipients, just by one click.
It might work when you are fighting some poor manually-sent mails (i.e. when someone is manually sending newsletters or ads through BCC: or some mailing list), but not against spambots, which blindly copy-paste the same message.

>Why are junk messages legal, even though it sometimes may be a fraud?
Well, these messages are NOT legal in Poland (Art. 172 of Ustawa Prawo telekomunikacyjne) - you must have permission to send marketing mail to your recipients. Few years ago, that legal act had lighter terms of SPAM, which many companies had abused (usually, their line of defense was that "they got your email from public place, such as website" etc.), but now you need explicit permission from the end-user (basically anyone connected to network is end-user). It seems to be working, but as always you have to cut through some red-tape, to actually make the spammer pay for it, but its possible.
In the USA, they have the CAN-SPAM act, which was poorly written, thus allowing sending unsolicited mail, IF you add an opt-out option somewhere in the message, so they basically brought this onto themselves. Also, SPAM messages are usually frauds, unless you are willing to buy 100 tonnes of viagra, or you win an iPad each time you visit a website...
I don't have problem with SPAM- Gmail might be reading your mails and spying on you :3, but it works flawlessly with filtering spam mails, although there are plenty of tools to fight it (blacklists, Bayesian spam filters etc.). Also unchecking any boxes during registration on website helps a lot :3
What do you think about James’s way of dealing with spam?
I think it is great... make someone else angry as much as they make us with junk mail. It is a terrible time waster and lot of effort for IT Administrators ha to be put in to filter all that junk.

Why are junk messages legal, even though it sometimes may be a fraud?
Really do not know. Western Union made a lot of people in Nigeria easy to fraud and the police is lost at any case. Look that even on Ebay there are lot of signs - NO SCAM, I do not send anything to Nigeria. I had similiar case last week when I sold my phone on Allegro (worth about 300 zł). Someone wrote me about the price and after my reply I received that e-mail:


Thanks for the mail.i want you to end the auction for me on allegro because i have problem with my allegro..i cant bid or buy now.i am ready to pay you the commission for allegro and shipment fee.i will deposit 500pln + 200pln shipment fee with EMS POCZTEX is South Africa.i need you to mail me your full banking details for the deposit as

Name:
Account Number:
Bank Name:
Phone Number:




Do you have a problem with spam? How do you deal with with it?
Gmail and outlook.com are dealing with SPAM quite well. But if you use something like tlen.pl or wp.pl as your e-mail host you will have to delete lot of it.
Indeed, the presentation was amazing. And i really like his way of fighting with spam. I don't know if they're legal or not - i'm not a lawyer but if they're dangerous for users, consequences should be drawn for their authors. I personally don't have problems with spam, maybe my mail algorithms are clever or i am clever enough to not type my e-mail address everywhere.
Wow, you made quite good research! The only thing I want to mention is fact that even if something is legal, it does not mean it's ethical. Many websites like online stores or ordering food online sites does not give you option - you accept their rules, which mostly will lead to spam or you can go to other site. Also I think that despite fact that online frauds are illegal, there is still vastness of it in the internet.

You, like most people there, are using Gmail, which is very good solution for not having spam. If you are not using it, use "10/20 minutes mail" for sites that you are not likely to use in future.
Unknown said…
He is so funny. My mom wants to reply to spam emails sometimes. But I tell her not to do that.
It's a shame that nowadays we don't receive funny spam emails like this. If it's spam, it's generated by robots, there are links and that's all. Nothing special. Google Mail does a good job.
But spam as newsletters is annoying. I hate it when I have to register on sites and it automatically adds me to the newsletter list. And then I have to unsubscribe, otherwise, my mail will be full of trash.
James idea is really funny and clever one, but it will not work against mails send by bots, unfortunately.

Your situation from Allegro is quite disturbing for me. This time there were no bigger consequences, because their target was you, young person that is familiar with IT and which was able to say that this is fraud. Now let's think what can happen if next time their potential victim will be someone older or much younger than us?

Discussion below this video has clearly shown that Gmail is one of the best tool to use to deal with spam.
James for our king in defeating spam :)!

It's great to hear that you don't have problem with spam. Hope that it won't change in future.
That's great that your mom has someone like you. I am also trying to prevent my parents from malware, spam etc, but not everybody has IT person in family that can take role of a "guardian".

I agree that newsletters are annoying. Sad thing is that sometimes you must accept rules of some internet store to purchase something and those rules most the time consist of newsletter acceptance.
Unknown said…
That one made me laugh. Yep, send money via a Giant Gummy Lizard, that sounds hilarious. It's a great way to deal with spammers/scammers as James mentions time spent on him is a spammer/scammer time not spent on other people.
I don't have a problem with spam, I deal with it having multiple "trash" email accounts. If I need to create an account on a site or service which I don't trust that it will not share my email details I just use one of those accounts and forget about it.
If you like James humor, you may also check this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5d8pVg3Qtg.
Nowadays there is no need to have as you called "trash" emails account - you can use sites like "10/20 minutes mail".
James Veitch is genius , I was really curious how conversion will ended. Why are junk messages legal? Personally, I don't know, definitively there are a lot of naive people which will believe all that crap , and at the end they may loose money. I don't have any problems with spam. For suspicious and strange sites or something else I use special mail box, my main box is clean.
Unknown said…
That was a funny video. I usually respond to scammers as well but unfortunately the filters are getting better and better so it is getting difficult to find a good one that was written by an actual person and not a bot. I believe that it is a good form of entertainment that doesn't hurt anyone. Even if the scammer feels offended that you wasted his or her time, I would never feel guilty about that because why should I?.

BTW: The funniest thing is when you scam a scammer and ask them for their personal data to confirm that they are legitimate. Once a guy has sent me his picture and a name and I found him on facebook - he bragged about scamming people in one of his posts. Fun stuff.
If you are a fan of James, you can check out his other videos on YouTube.

Using multiple mail accounts is a good and very often used strategy. It's sad that there are a lot of people that are victims of frauds like discussed one. Hope it will change in future.
Unknown said…
I was laughing out loud while I was watching this awesome presentation. Thank you very much Andrzej to link this video to your presentation. But back to the ground - I don't think that is a way to deal with the spam. This guy was probably a comedian and it wasn't a science show.

I think that for me junk messages are not really dangerous because I am concious that we can find a milions of scams on internet and I don't believe in very attractive offerts. On the other hand I know that internet is used by different people - sometimes they don't have knowledge and it is easy to make of their innocence.

I don't have a problem with a SPAM because I use a Gmail and they protect their users from SPAM...of course except SPAM from companies which don't pay Google for adverts.

KitKat :D
Haha, nice story xD I think that in future, I will also try to do stuff like you and James, maybe it will be some internet hit which will make me famous? It's quite sad that there are people who make money by scamming, but that's how our world works, unfortunately.
I'm glad that I've made your day a little bit better, Tomasz. If you want to laught more, you can also watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5d8pVg3Qtg
or this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dceyy0cX6J4.

I don't agree that spam is not dangerous. Of course if you are spammed by McDonald or MediaMarkt it will not harm you, but still there is a lot of junk messages than can be frauds or that can include some computer malware.

After today's conservation we should create new hashtag called "Gmail master race", that's how popular it is.

Patryk Pohnke said…
1. This was very good presentation. I think he did good job, cause he wasted some of scammer's guy time, he made an enjoyable show and he alerted his audience about the problem.
2. I guess they are not legal, but they are hard to detect and then fight as you can create as many email accounts as you wish.
3. As I am using gmail spam messages are not an issue for me and I recommend it.
I agree with you that James did a good job, while makeing it super funny at the same time. I'm also using gmail and it's probably the best mail right now.
This is actually a perfect way of doing something productive while having fun from doing so. Wasting scammers' time is a noble goal, while he's also generating funny content and warning people about potential traps, so it's literally 3 in 1 - we have fun, scammers are wasting time and audience is more aware of the problem. Personally I never bothered replying to such e-mail, as it only confirms that given e-mail address is in use (so you can expect more spam, sigh), but I find it hilarious how far you can go with this, especially if you play dumb guy who just got a computer for his first day.

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