Googlewhack trick used to slip junk mail past spam filters

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Quinten Lansu

Well this is awfully WWI... #

Posted Tuesday 6th November 2007 10:32 GMT

Looks like the trench wars of spam are still going.

Andrew Heenan

Slow, Slow Symantec #

Posted Tuesday 6th November 2007 10:32 GMT

These 'search result' URLs have been appearing for at least 6 months, and have been blocked - at least by gmail - for much of that time.

Where have Symantec been?

Paul Stevens

Brightmail? #

Posted Tuesday 6th November 2007 10:32 GMT

Brightmail couldn't spot a spammy mail if it slapped them in the face. $60-million world wide sales in a pretty lucrative market space is a piss poor effort. Develop new technology indeed. Pfft.

As for the junk mailing scum who infest the ether, I wish it was legal to shoot the bastards. Open season on the ROCSO list.

Anonymous Coward

I guess that's the end of tinyurl then. #

Posted Tuesday 6th November 2007 10:32 GMT

I guess that's the end of tinyurl then.

Anonymous Coward

Reverse Engineering ??? #

Posted Tuesday 6th November 2007 12:43 GMT

If you look at the Symantec link, they mention they did some reverse engineering. What was the reverse engineering which their scientists did you wonder?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=inurl:replica%20intext:%22Perfect+cheap+replica+watches+online.%22&btnI=

Take out the "%22&btnI=" at the end of the url

Brilliant !!!

Trinity

Title #

Posted Tuesday 6th November 2007 14:46 GMT

Is this why my earlier search for "aubergine" got this?

"We're sorry...

... but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now. "

http://www.google.co.uk/sorry/?continue=http://www.google.co.uk/search%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Daubergine%26btnG%3DGoogle%2BSearch%26meta%3D

(BTW: How about giving us the option of an icon that looks like someone banging their head on the desk? )

Benedict

@Trinity #

Posted Tuesday 6th November 2007 17:10 GMT

Are you using a web proxy at all? I've encountered the same error when searching google through a proxy.

El Veg

Re: I guess that's the end of tinyurl then. #

Posted Tuesday 6th November 2007 19:01 GMT

Here's an alternative that avoids the disguising feature of tinyurl AND also eliminates accidental clicks on links while avoiding having to memorize and retype complicated URLs - telldodo. (for example, tell dodo: kentucky button suspense)

Pascal Monett

The nice thing about my spam filter #

Posted Wednesday 7th November 2007 10:04 GMT

is that it evolves a lot faster than Symantec (anyone surprised ? thought not).

Any sender that is not on my whitelist get his mail sent to the spam bin. In the spam bin, any string that corresponds to anything I have previously flagged gets the mail deleted permanently.

End of story.

I haven't seen any of these reselling jokes since I flagged it five months ago. Besides, I don't click on links sent to me by people I don't know.

Dave Aitken