Jul

20

SMS spam, how did you know I was looking to shop?

Filed Under retards | 12 Comments

SMS-spam

Update 21 July 07 - Welcome, spam-haters redirected from Google! I started realizing that people were finding this post through search engines when they got hit by the same piece of spam-laden text-message/SMS on their phones. Do share your stories and any solutions you have found in the comments below. Or if you just want to vent your hate for mobile spam scourges in general ;) I’ll be monitoring the comment section of this post for, well.. spammers.

Allen@aerofire.c0m was spot on. He knew I was looking to buy W.indows V.ista and all software Adobe. When I got this text message, I visited the advertised site immediately. Checked out the prices, read their customer testimonials. Impressive business. I wasted no time and had ThreatSeeker label this site under “Potentially Unwanted Software”.

Take that, you spammer.

The aerofire.com address was obviously spoofed — aerofire.com looked like some sprinkler business, completely unrelated. And the WHOIS record for the sws00.com domain showed this very convincing record:

soft wen
        xiaowen
        No.2 chang'an road
        beijing Beijing 100001
        China
        tel: 86 010 2493049
        fax: 86 010 3240904
        234@34.com

I’m sure that the recent news about China now being the number 1 country for malware distribution has nothing to do with this. Probably just pure coincidence.

Mar

20

US Patent & Trademark Office

Filed Under retards | Leave a Comment

Is the patent system broken? Evidently, yes. Some dude patented the linked list. Yes, the linked list that all computer scientists learn in a low level undergraduate class.

For non-nerds, this would be the equivalent of something like patenting a sphere (yes, the 3-D shape). If I patented the sphere shape, and if you were a beach ball manufacturer, then you would have to pay me royalties — because I patented that shape, and it’s mine.

DOH. I want to patent a square please.