Two years spent spamming spammers back • Hacker News Board

Re: Two years spent spamming spammers back

#81

Post by bitwize » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 7:42 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #27

> Imagine if this type of thing happened in real-life. You walk out the door in the morning and you’re immediately attacked by Parul, Kevin, and Amelie. I laughed out loud at this, because it's exactly what I'm experiencing now in West Africa. Street vendors are aggressive about selling whatever they have, and they seem to assume I want it - almost like I owe it to them to buy it - I'm not sure if it's because I'm Wh…

Osaka was once the commerce center of old Japan, and to a certain extent that legacy remains: Osaka street and open-shop vendors give no fucks and seem to really crave that tourist money in particular. It's not as bad as you've described, but you can expect to be called out to by every corner fashion boutique salesgirl or streetside takoyaki vendor. Some even go to the length of learning English.

The upside of this is that people don't shy away from Westerners the way they do in Tokyo, which makes for a smootger experience if you enjoy talking to natives.

Re: Two years spent spamming spammers back

#82

Post by rhizome » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 7:43 PM UTC

huehehue wrote: post #68

grecy wrote: post #27

> Imagine if this type of thing happened in real-life. You walk out the door in the morning and you’re immediately attacked by Parul, Kevin, and Amelie. I laughed out loud at this, because it's exactly what I'm experiencing now in West Africa. Street vendors are aggressive about selling whatever they have, and they seem to assume I want it - almost like I owe it to them to buy it - I'm not sure if it's because I'm Wh…

If you've ever been to NYC, this is pretty much the tour bus ticket salesmen. Some will follow you from behind with their arms outstretched in front of your face, flashing tour bus tickets. After a particularly stressful day, one guy decides to take it upon himself to follow me like that for the better part of a city block. Ignoring him wasn't working, so I (honestly quite gently) brushed his hand out of my face, and…

Next time: sneeze on their hands.

Re: Two years spent spamming spammers back

#83

Post by ttul » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 7:45 PM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #4

It would be great if someone could implement this as a free public service, using neural algorithms to generate responses.

You could train an LSTM network to generate responses in the same way that google's inbox response suggestions work. Requires a mountain of source data, but hey, you probably have 30GB of email sitting in your Gmail, right?

Re: Two years spent spamming spammers back

#84

Post by khedoros » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 7:55 PM UTC

codingdave wrote: post #55

Sure, great idea, funny and clever and all that. But I disagree with the idea that inboxes are sacred, and disagree with the attitude of "how dare people send marketing to me!" Fraudulent spam is one thing. Plain old marketing or sales cold calls, though... you know people are going to do it. It is their job. And I'd much rather get emails than I can quickly delete and ignore vs. phone calls. And once in a while, som…

They're people that know that they're wasting small amounts of time for large numbers of people and presumably gaining financially from some small number of those people. I delete the e-mails because it's the quick and convenient thing to do, but I don't have any problem with the idea of someone trying to waste their time. "It's their job" isn't a convincing argument; it sounds too much like the defense of "I was just following orders".

If someone feels entitled to someone else's time, I don't see any problem in turning the situation around. If there wasn't a good enough ROI on cold-call marketing, it would be rarer, and that sounds like a net benefit to me.

Re: Two years spent spamming spammers back

#85

Post by maaaats » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 7:59 PM UTC

titomc wrote: post #80

One spammer realised that he is talking to a bot and asks the bot about the three laws. http://www.mlooper.com/conversations/3072

This kinda rocked my view on spammers. It's easy to group them together and have a lot of prejudice, but clearly they come in all kinds of forms.

Re: Two years spent spamming spammers back

#86

Post by craigsmansion » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 8:15 PM UTC

calebsurfs wrote: post #76

grecy wrote: post #27

> Imagine if this type of thing happened in real-life. You walk out the door in the morning and you’re immediately attacked by Parul, Kevin, and Amelie. I laughed out loud at this, because it's exactly what I'm experiencing now in West Africa. Street vendors are aggressive about selling whatever they have, and they seem to assume I want it - almost like I owe it to them to buy it - I'm not sure if it's because I'm Wh…

Locals usually have a way to get rid of street vendors that is effective, so finding out what that is in your locality is a good idea. In Mexico, it's Hoy no (Not today) and it works pretty well.

Why bother with that if you feel perfectly self-entitled, judging by the comments, to be aggressive and yell crude language at people who are just trying to make a living in a manner or cultural context you don't understand or want to have anything to do with?

Re: Two years spent spamming spammers back

#87

Post by craigsmansion » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 8:18 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #36

bigdubs wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously not the same but I've had this happen in a couple places and I just say "FUCK OFF" as loud as I can and get visibly upset and they leave me alone after that.

....That's a horrible way to react. I wonder what these people think about you and your country of origin. You are, after all, an ambassador for your country when ever you are outside it.

Well, for some countries being an ambassador actually means being a rude, obnoxious asshole. They're just doing their duty and sharing their cultural values.

Re: Two years spent spamming spammers back

#88

Post by dcminter » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 8:28 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #74

The one for phones has been on HN before. This one for spam is nice, but not yet smart enough. With more smarts and some understanding of the messages, it could keep spammers going forever. It doesn't need to be very intelligent; it just needs to get up to the Eliza level. If it detects a spam related to search engine optimization, it should have a list of about a hundred plausible questions it can ask on that subjec…

When especially irritated by spam of this type I like to look up the isp hosting their register link and then sign up on their site with its abuse@ details (or occasionally @localhost for a bit of variety). Every clog in the gears help or at least it's cathartic to imagine so.

Re: Two years spent spamming spammers back

#89

Post by chrissnell » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 8:39 PM UTC

This reminds me of a script I wrote about a decade ago to deal with phishing sites. My script generated first and last names, email addresses, passwords, and credit card numbers that actual passed checksum validation. It would submit these fake entries to a phishing form just as fast as the remote end would take them, polluting their database/inbox/whatever with thousands of bogus submissions. Besides wasting their time and resources, it also smokescreened any legitimate submissions that might have come through.

Re: Two years spent spamming spammers back

#90

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 8:41 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #27

> Imagine if this type of thing happened in real-life. You walk out the door in the morning and you’re immediately attacked by Parul, Kevin, and Amelie. I laughed out loud at this, because it's exactly what I'm experiencing now in West Africa. Street vendors are aggressive about selling whatever they have, and they seem to assume I want it - almost like I owe it to them to buy it - I'm not sure if it's because I'm Wh…

>every single street vendor selling carrots will still try with 100% effort to sell me carrots //

It's like giving in to a nagging child - they now know that you're an easy mark and will be even more determined to break you because they now know they can. You bought carrots from someone else, probably to stop them hassling you, so now if I want to sell t you I know if I'm annoying enough the chances are high you'll buy from me too.