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Three Stray Thoughts

Mar 19, 2012
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1. It's easier to get rid of herpes or get out of Gitmo than it is to get off of SiriusXM's incessant-call list. Go get buried in a sweaty guy's crawlspace, SiriusXM marketing executives.*

2. Speaking of asshole marketers: our comment spam is now almost manageable because we've set comments to close automatically after a couple of months. By that I mean I can review the spam filter every few days, save legitimate comments, and put potentially funny or otherwise bloggable spam aside for later. Before this, we got more than a thousand spam comments per day. But — it is absolutely infuriating that we have to do this, because I get a few emails a week from people with a worthwhile comment on an old post.

3. On a (mostly) unrelated note: among many, here's one good reason to avoid defamation litigation and other forms of censorship: the more-speech remedy works. Holy shit, does it work.

*I might as well admit it now, because Patrick will point it out in the comments if I don't — I'm too much of a sissy to use an edgier prison in that line.

Last 5 posts by Ken White

14 Comments
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14 Comments

  1. TJIC  •  Mar 19, 2012 @2:01 pm

    > On a (mostly) unrelated note: among many, here's one good reason to avoid defamation litigation and other forms of censorship: the more-speech remedy works. Holy shit, does it work.

    Yeah, I noted the results of that earlier today.

    Well done, all!

  2. Passing thru, may stick around.  •  Mar 19, 2012 @4:22 pm

    On the first of your three points — to slow down phone spam:

    A. Spam with live caller:

    Spammer: "Hello, Mr. Popehat?"

    P-H: "Sorry, but he's unavailable right now. How may I help you?"

    Spammer: "Can you tell me when/where to reach him? I have an important message about our new yadayada offer." (Actually it doesn't matter what he says, as long as he doesn't just hang up.)

    P-H: "I don't think so. I'm executor of his estate."

    Live call spammers will tend to remove Mr. Popehat from their list.

    Of course, Mr. Popehat's "executor" might find himself on numerous scam bill collection lists (with live callers) for Mr. Popehat's "outstanding bill for yadayada". If you get one of those, you've hit pay dirt. Your DA or AG might even be interested.

    B. Robocall spam.

    If you have caller ID available, then for any call with "restricted" caller ID, or any ID you think is a spammer:

    Send the call to a voicemail which answers with an appropriate "intercept tone". These are the tones you hear when you dial a disconnected number, for instance. These sets of tones have particular meanings if the calling computer recognizes them. You can make intercept tones yourself with free audio editing software. Specs are available on Wikipedia.

    Follow the tone with an appropriate message, like "Sorry but this line is unavailable due to military action in the area."

    Some legitimate robocall computer programs recognize intercept tones and strike the number from their list automatically. Others, especially illegal robodialers, not so much.

  3. KronWeld  •  Mar 19, 2012 @4:35 pm

    Point 3, did I miss something. I have no idea if this is referring to something specific or just in general. If specific, what? If general, would someone point me to some examples?

    I'm thinking I missed whatever the PopeHat signal for bloggers was about. I'm really curious; but I'm not a cat, so I won't die from it.

  4. Ken Hamer  •  Mar 20, 2012 @12:54 am

    re: Point 3 – yeah, me too…?

  5. Damon  •  Mar 20, 2012 @4:47 am

    Back before the real estate bubble crashed, I used to get dozens of calls a week for a refinance. If I had nothing better to do at the time, I’d engage them, only for kicks and grins. I want a 4.5% conventional, no points, 30 yr fixed. No one could do that. Snicker. I spend 30 mins once getting the guy to get down to 5%. At 5% he made a comment about wanting to move some loan volume even though he wasn't going to make much money on the deal. I immediately responded with a demand for 4.5% saying, "if you'll take a loss at 5% for volume, you'll take a loss at 4.5% to do the deal because you're hungry. He said he'd call back. Never did. I enjoyed that. :)

  6. SnallaBolaget  •  Mar 20, 2012 @6:55 am

    Have you guys tried Akismet to mange comment spam? It has worked wonders for us at least, and we used to get (not thousands) hundreds of spam comments every single day.

  7. ZK  •  Mar 20, 2012 @7:27 am

    I'm not sure if we're not supposed to ask, but I'd really like to know the back-story for Point 3. I read enough similar blogs to suspect *who* was helped (I mean, finding a common denominator isn't hard), but would love to know what circumstances required such a move.

  8. delurking  •  Mar 20, 2012 @9:36 am

    Damon,
    That was fun?

    ZK, go a few pages down in google.

  9. Dan Weber  •  Mar 20, 2012 @12:22 pm

    That's a whole lot o' crazy

  10. KronWeld  •  Mar 20, 2012 @12:31 pm

    Well, it looks like some have figured out what point 3 is/was about, but I'm still clueless and don't know what to Google to get a clue. Ken must be trying to finish driving me crazy (a very short drive, if I do say so myself.)

  11. Ken  •  Mar 20, 2012 @1:07 pm

    Isn't a nice day for a walk, instead?

  12. BCP  •  Mar 20, 2012 @3:59 pm

    For the sake of the person being helped here, I'm glad it worked. But I hate that now the general public has to surf a bit and actively search for the original material, which is fascinating. Time Cube Guy fascinating.

  13. Robert  •  Mar 22, 2012 @8:02 am

    I just approve every single comment. But it's not a burden; I just approve a couple of good ones, then close it forever. There are way too many people in 3rd world countries who will leave comment spam for fractions of a cent per post, and I can't waste my time reading through all of them.

  14. patent  •  Mar 27, 2012 @2:37 pm

    By the way, I also find it interesting that "Onward Christian Soldier" suddenly appears, once again, when "Sassss" seems to have run into some difficulty. They failed with the previous "anonymous/david" ploy, and now seem to be engaging full racism and real "anti semitism" to disrupt this site even further. He now has someone who will "engage" him from a perspective that he finds comfortable and which does not really challenge his extreme beliefs.