Update: Spammers Using Book Text

Ok, I have an update on my earlier post about receiving spam in my GMail inbox that contained text from "The Three Musketeers."

After looking through the rest of my spam messages, I discovered some of them also had quotes in the body of the message. Instead of the paragraphs that I was getting with the Three Musketeers spam, it was just three lines.

Searching on Google for these quotes, interestingly enough, returned only a few pages. These pages were typically hard-to-read Blogspot webpages, where the only posts were a bunch of spam messages, identical to the ones I was getting in my Spam box. Is this someone who is just posting their spam to their blog site? Or is it a method for distributing spam?

After not having much luck with Google, I decided to try the Google Book Search. Aha! Luck! And here's the bottom line: Every one of the 9 spam messages I checked contained a different set of three lines from this book:

A Stainless Steel Trio: A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born/The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted/The...
by Harry Harrison

Looking up Harry Harrison, I noticed he has a website (http://www.harryharrison.com/), which, although it could have a better web design, is probably not a spammer's homepage.

So here's my questions:
1) Why are spammers including text from books? The obvious answer to me is to try to defeat spam filters, but it certainly isn't working with GMail.
2) Why that book? Why the Three Musketeers? Or does it matter, and those were just chosen because they were available?
3) Is this copyright infringement? I'm sure everyone would love to have spammers locked away for good. I'm sure spamming is shaky legal ground, but I know copying someone's book and sending it out over email is breaking copyright. Maybe we could send these people behind bars?

I'll leave you with the book quotes. Hopefully they won't constitute copyright infringement (if they do, Mr. Harrison, please contact me and I will happily remove them).

---

must have been settled well before the League ever found this planet.
Thats why there is no record of them.
Who are them?

---

my feet. So I switched off the molebind gloves and swung down, hanging
only from the soles of my boots. The blood rushed to my head-as well
it might bringing with it a surge of nausea and a sensation of great

---

bystanders and occasionally giving a royal flick of the hand at some
of our cheering fans. We moved on through what appeared to be a
residential quarter and beyond it into a park-like countryside. Our

---

darkness! Release me, do not kill me, tell me what you wish of me then
go back to the pit from which you have escaped . . .
I reached out and tweaked his nose sharply. Shut up. Open your eyes.

---

my shoulder and waved. And theres Floyd - and Madonette. Welcome, my
dear, welcome. I would stand to greet you, but only with difficulty.
She smiled and kissed his forehead below the bandage. Of course she

---

Look! I snarled. Speak! And moaning does not count as speaking.
Ever seen this thing?
This one gurgled instead of moaning, then yiped as his arm got

---

gear. The League did have an outpost on this planet - disguised as an
interstellar shipping firm-which contained a fully equipped machine
shop and electronic facilities.

---

Floyd easily outdistanced me and by the time I got to the scene,
staggering and panting, it was all ancient history. Our faithful
friend was barking and, foreleg lifted and tail outstretched, was

---

walked away from the others so my voice would not disturb them.
Come in Tremearne. Can you read me.
Sergeant Naenda here. The Captain is off duty this watch. Should I

---

Three Musketeers Spam

My time finally ran out.

For a while, I had been successfully avoiding getting any spam at all in my Gmail inbox. Perhaps this was because my username isn't a necessarily common one (kilroy2004).

At some point in the past several months, I started seeing messages appearing in my Spam box, but didn't think too much of it. However - I have more recently started getting spam delivered straight to my Inbox. When this first happened, I simply ignored it and "Report Spam"ed it. Gmail seems to adapt to these pesky messages, and has gotten better at filtering them out as I teach it what I don't like. (I should also mention that I love how good a job Google does at not sticking false-positives in my Spam box, unlike some email companies I could name.)

Today, I got for the first time a piece of spam I had not expected. The first paragraph of the spam message was from The Three Musketeers! The rest of the message was spam, but someone out there was clearly trying to defeat spam filters by including this text. I marked it as spam anyway, and noticed a little bit later in the day that another Three Musketeers spam message got filtered directly to the Spam box (good job, Google).

So, here's my question... what's the point of all this spam? I get messages with garbled text, broken pictures, Three Musketeers text, text ads for Viagra, %-off deals... none of which I have signed up for, but all of which have somehow been targeted toward me. What's the point? If you want to get me to buy something, the least you could do is write a decent subject line... not something like: Re: caxyrVljIAGRA. I mean, honestly! Who's going to click on that?

I could write a much better spam message in just a few minutes:
Subject: Pharmacy Online - Buy cheap Viagra!
Body: Do you need cheap Viagra? You won't find it anywhere cheaper than our online store at ___. Plus, we offer free shipping for orders over $100! New customers get half a bottle FREE! Try us today!

In parting, I will leave you with the text of my Three Musketeers spam:

And at these words Lord de Winter passed his arm through that ofFelton, and led him out, laughing. I thought so; but we will return to my Lord Dukepresently. Andyet if we burn it, who knows whether Monsieur Cardinal has not asecret to interrogate ashes? Adieu, dear sister, till your next swoon! The soldier went out to obey the orders of his officer. I am for younot only a protector, but a friend; not only a benefactor, but afather. In one case or theother, the trial was soon over. Indeed, sir, said Milady, you must be either drunk or mad. And now, madame, try to make your peace with God, for you arejudged by men! In the morning, when they entered her chamber she was still inbed. There are here no procurators who regulatesuccessions beforehand. The Rochellais, then, had no hope but in Buckingham. In the morning at nine oclock, in the day at one oclock, andin the evening at eight. And remounting his horse, which Cahusac led to him, he salutedthem with his hand, and rode away. Inthe first place, La Rochelle appeared impregnable. He is a young, ingenuous, pure man whoseems virtuous; him there are means of destroying. That knife was for you,my lad; she would have killed you. There are here no procurators who regulatesuccessions beforehand. From whom cancome so many disgraces heaped upon her head, if not from him? Felton made a slight bow, and directed his steps toward the door.

Edit: Here's a link to where this text is in The Three Musketeers:
http://www.literature.org/authors/dumas-alexandre/the-three-musketeers/chapter-52.html

Gmail+Writely+Spreadsheets+?... A Perfect World?

So today I made good use of the GMail Suggestion Form today. I think it's great that they list the commonly requested features to save themselves time (and someone making a feature request). However, the feature I was submitting is so glaring and obvious that I can't believe it hasn't become one of their top requests!

Integrate Gmail with Writely, Google Spreadsheets, and Picasa Web Albums.

This seems like an obvious step (or is it just me?). When you have an attachment at the bottom of your email, Google gives you just two options: "View As HTML" and "Download." Isn't it an obvious choice for RTF or DOC files to "Open With Writely?" Isn't it an obvious choice for XLS files to "Open With GSpreadsheets?"

One of the reasons to have Writely and GoogleSpreadsheets is to give the user a web-interface to edit their files (especially if they don't have the software to open the files on their computer). But right now, I have to download the DOC file to my computer, log in to Writely, upload the file to my Writely account, and then begin editing it.

I understand that Gmail is still a beta product, and Writely and GoogleSpreadsheets are both beta products as well. This, however, is a natural step (I think) for these applications to make. In fact, ideally all of these Google programs would be saved and read from an online GoogleHardDrive... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'd also like to mention that I was trying to find a way to modify Gmail (with a plugin or something similar) so that it would have these features. But I was unable to find a way for Writely to open files from the web! (Is uploading the only option?) If that's the case, Writely needs to be updated to have this feature!

Gmail Inbox Dynamic Size

I'm sure many of the technology-literate will remember when Google first rolled out their GMail service. As I recall, everyone thought it was an April Fool's joke. After all, Google is famous for them. And the concept of one gigabyte of storage for your online email was revolutionary.
A year later, Google bumped the size up to 2 GB.


If you are like me, whenever you log in to GMail, you might glance for a moment at the rapidly changing counter at the bottom of the page:
"Over 2741.225060 megabytes (and counting) of free storage"
"Over 2741.225124 megabytes (and counting) of free storage"
"Over 2741.225173 megabytes (and counting) of free storage"

Have you ever investigated this counter?

Interested in when we'd hit the magical 3GB mark (3072MB), I took a look at the source code for the GMail homepage. Surprisingly, it was not a server-side update, but just a standard javascript function. Delving a little deeper, I investigated how the javascript worked. The key behind it all is this array:

[ 1136102400000, 2680 ]
[ 1149145200000, 2730 ]
[ 1167638400000, 2800 ]

The datestamp is on the left side, and the GMail size on the right side. The datestamps are standard unix timestamps (in milliseconds). Here's what that tells us:

January 1st, 2006 : 2680 megabytes
June 1st, 2006 : 2730 megabytes
January 1st, 2007 : 2800 megabytes

Until those numbers are updated, we will incrementally be counting upward from June 1st's value of 2730, up to January 1st's value of 2800. (And if we look at today, July 5th's value, we see this is true, with 2741MB.)

Researching on the web, I found several sites that had investigated this code in the past:
July 31, 2005 (Sree's Tech Notes)
August 25th, 2005 (Antimail)

As well as a site that has continually been updating the count: (GMail is increasing mailboxes size)

It looks like we used to be increasing the size at about 100MB per month, but at the current rate, it looks like we won't see 3GB for another 2 years. Hopefully, the next update from Google will show us the exact time that we can expect our 3GB inbox (maybe for GMail's 4 year birthday?). Or maybe they have slowed down to make it look even more dramatic when they announce a 500GB inbox... or a 1TB inbox. And maybe I should stop dreaming...

Speaking of large inboxes, how many people have even filled up their 2GB inbox?