Early one morning I received an email notification about a bug report to one of my open source projects. I like to be helpful and I want people who use my stuff to have a good time, so I gave it my attention. Here's what it said: 😱 I Can't Use On This Day 😭 Seriously, What’s Going On?! 🔍 I’ve been trying to use the On This Day feature, but it’s just not working for me! 😩 Every time I input my d…
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Over the last few weeks, I've received several calls which all have the same modus operandi. A disembodied robotic voice tries to get me to connect on WhatsApp. https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/add-me-on-whatsapp.mp4 Some of the voices are reasonable facsimiles of human voices (like the above) and some are just garbage. 🔊 💾 Download this audio file. The voice cl…
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Someone recently complained that using JetPack's Akismet anti-spam plugin wasn't very privacy friendly. So, because I take every minor complaint as a personal rebuke, I decided to switch to AntiSpam Bee - an open source and local antispam solution. And... it's pretty good! There is the occasional false negative - but not significantly worse than JetPack. Most of the false negatives are from…
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I like beer. I like the Internet. What if I could get beer using the Internet?!?! A few years ago I purchased a mixed crate of beer online. I unticked all the checkboxes for marketing messages - but incautiously allowed them to send me special offers. Every couple of months, they'd send me an email offering discount beer. And I'd ignore it. Mostly because I was still slowly working my way…
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Back in June, I noticed a pretty insidious piece of Twitter spam. The "twoo.fun" website was claiming that it could tell you who visited your Twitter profile. That's pretty enticing! It's what LinkedIn uses to drive its premium product. Perhaps it would tell me if a potential employer was looking at my profile? Or if my crush kept visiting it!??!?!? So people visited the website and signed in…
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Recently, I've been getting a lot of spam notifications from Google Drive. Here's a sample: The notifications come direct to my Android phone via the Drive app - they don't appear in my Gmail spam folder. There is no way to report the abuse. If I go to the list of notification in the Android apps, there's no option to report that the notification is spam. If I'm stupid enough to open the…
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User Generated Content is great, innit? As a company, I want users to submit photos, so I don't have to do any content curation. Moderation? Nah mate, stick some AI on there to filter out anything offensive and we're golden. *sigh* James Whatley (inactive)@WhatleydudeSurprised Loch Ness isn't trending tbqh.❤️ 7💬 0🔁 021:36 - Sat 07 August 2021James Whatley (inactive)@WhatleydudeSearching for Loch…
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Earlier this week, my holiday was interrupted by a sophisticated SMS scam. Rude! Let's take a look at it. Let's take a look at all the ways we can tell it is a scam. Firstly, and most obviously, I am not a customer of Lloyds Bank! But these scammers send out to multiple people hoping to catch victims. Secondly, I've not made a complaint to Lloyds! But, again, scammers know that plenty of…
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In the last few months, I've received dozens of spam calls which appear to come from a similar phone number to mine. If my number is 07700 900 123 I get calls from 07700 900 124 or 07700 900 456 Here's my working theory on why spammers do this. Americans. In the UK, there's a separate "area code" for mobile phones. If a number starts 07 then it is mobile (it's a bit more complicated than…
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Like most of you, I'm inundated with spam calls. So I have a new solution. When an unknown number calls me, they get routed to this audio file. 🔊 💾 Download this audio file. This was created with Amazon Polly which is free for casual use. I was pretty impressed with the voice quality. Although there are limits to how well you can control the speed and intonation. While there are a nu…
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Like many of you, I'm inundated with spam calls. I've suffered endless car accidents, my National Insurance Number has been suspended multiple times, and my broadband will be cut off imminently. Wouldn't be nice to screen out all the fraudsters? So I've set up a Bananaphone. When people ring me, they get 30 seconds of my favourite song. Then the call is passed to me. The theory being that my…
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The UK is facing an epidemic of SMS fraud. Scammers know that we're all at home eagerly waiting for deliveries. So they send out phishing messages saying "Sorry we missed you" or "You need to pay a delivery fee". If you click on the link they send, you'll go to a very convincing website which looks identical to the courier's page. Whereupon the fraudsters will ask for your bank details, credit…
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