By @edent · Open Source spam WordPress · 3 comments · 200 words
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 […]
Continue reading →By @edent · alcohol marketing NaBloPoMo spam · 2 comments · 550 words · read ~142 times.
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 […]
Continue reading →By @edent · spam twitter · 1 comment · 500 words · read ~5,072 times.
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 […]
Continue reading →By @edent · google spam · 11 comments · 400 words · read ~5,494 times.
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 […]
Continue reading →By @edent · google porn spam · 6 comments · 250 words · read ~24,584 times.
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* Searching for Loch Ness on Google Maps is certainly an eye opener if you […]
Continue reading →By @edent · phishing scam sms spam · 3 comments · 650 words · read ~574 times.
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 […]
Continue reading →By @edent · mobile spam · 7 comments · 200 words · read ~470 times.
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 […]
Continue reading →By @edent · mobile spam voice · 150 words · read ~452 times.
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. 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 […]
Continue reading →By @edent · android mobile phone sip spam voip · 3 comments · 300 words · read ~191 times.
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 […]
Continue reading →By @edent · fraud phishing sms spam · 16 comments · 550 words · read ~3,951 times.
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 […]
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