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Subliminal Spam Using an Animated GIF

Posted by kdawson on Mon Sep 04, 2006 02:47 PM
from the you-are-getting-sleeeeepy dept.
Spam
JohnGrahamCumming writes "Everyone's noticed the recent flood of image spam (including the SpamAssassin developers who are working on an OCR-extension to beat it), but take a look at this spam containing a subliminal message flashed every 17 seconds to try to entice you to buy the stock being pumped. Does this work? Warning: link shows the actual spam; don't blame me if you lose money on this stock!"
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  • That's ridiculous. (Score:5, Funny)

    by DrunkenTerror (561616) on Monday September 04 2006, @02:49PM (#16039391) Homepage Journal
    It's actually a pretty good stock.

    • A little history is in order here. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04 2006, @05:17PM (#16040085)
      When I was in college in the sixty's I attended a talk on subliminal advertising and there were some rather interesting points. First, advertisers determined the speed at which it worked, then crossed the outstretched palms of their coin-operated congressmen to define a much faster speed as "subliminal," thus clearing the legal field. Next they performed a major experiment. At that time (maybe still, I don't watch the boob tube at all) Pillsbury had an ad where a cartoon "Dough Boy" would jump out of a roll of biscuits when it was hit on a table edge and proclaim the "wonderfullness" of the product. A subliminal spot of a pregnant woman was placed just before Dough Boy jumped out . . . and sales soared. There was also a major flap about some "scientist" who supposedly faked his data on subliminal advertising, which played right into the advertisers hands, of course, so who knows what to believe?

      BillyDoc

  • Subliminal messages (Score:5, Insightful)

    by personman21 (762072) on Monday September 04 2006, @02:50PM (#16039395)
    Don't work. This supposed message is so obvious it's hard not to laugh.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rritterson (588983) *
      If you are aware of the message, it's not subliminal--it's just plain liminal.

      There is a lot of subliminal messages in advertising, especially on TV. Given our consumerist culture, i'd say it's working fairly well.

    • The article on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] is actually pretty good. There may be some transitory or faint effects caused by subliminal messages. Advertisers have been trying to capitalize on this possibility for 49 years.

      If subliminal messages had any significant effect we would know about it. They've been trying for years.

      There have been interesting claims at subliminal messages in popular music. KAKE-TV in Wichita, Kansas, used a subliminal message to attempt catch the BTK killer, but it had no perceptible effect.

      I'd

      • Re:Also Doesn't Work (Wikipedia) (Score:5, Funny)

        by FhnuZoag (875558) on Monday September 04 2006, @04:26PM (#16039836)
        The seemingly random bolding of text in your comment gives me a sudden urge to buy stuff.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by FhnuZoag (875558)
          I suspect it was done for the science programme Tommorrow's World. (Pretty cool thing giving weekly news of scientific/technological developments, now sadly deceased)

          I don't buy the study, though. The geographical split is likely very significant here. There's good evidence that people decide these things based on what they feel at the time, and there's also good evidence showing that people's self-statements of happiness are influenced by where they live. Without a control group, the results are pretty mea

  • Nope. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Phroggy (441) * <slashdot3&phroggy,com> on Monday September 04 2006, @02:50PM (#16039397) Homepage
    This really has nothing to do with subliminal messages, and everything to do with trying to defeat OCR software. I was seeing animated GIFs exactly like this where the "buy" frames were just blank, before they started adding "BUY!" to those frames.

    • Re:Nope. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Curmudgeonlyoldbloke (850482) on Monday September 04 2006, @03:30PM (#16039599)
      Nah - it's just someone " 'aving a larf " and trying to make their spam stand out for a split-second among all the other spam.

      It worked though - even though the original article is slashdotted all of the images have been reproduced here. The spammers must be laughing all the way to the bank...

  • Except.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by madaxe42 (690151) on Monday September 04 2006, @02:50PM (#16039398) Homepage
    Outlook doesn't support animated gifs (nor most CSS, but that's another matter...!) - I received one of these this morning but all it showed was the 'buy buy buy' frame - my response was 'what an utterly utterly pointless spam'.

  • Well... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sv-Manowar (772313) on Monday September 04 2006, @02:51PM (#16039400) Homepage Journal
    Seems to me as if the people behind the spam have been reading a few too many articles about subliminal marketing and are just trying their luck. What i'd be more worried about if I was them would be using an animated gif in massive mailing, surely that is going to heavily suck bandwidth (as much as they do have, a lot of resources go in to the mailing and the hardware to power it). If I were them I'd stick with the text plea, I'm far more likely to want to help out the prince of Nigeria than a 1998-style flashing .gif.

    • What i'd be more worried about if I was them would be using an animated gif in massive mailing, surely that is going to heavily suck bandwidth (as much as they do have, a lot of resources go in to the mailing and the hardware to power it)

      The key is, they don't pay for those resources. They use some sort of a "bot-net" to send the mail - "zombie" computers, often on residential broadband connections which have been contaminated with some virus (or something virus-like, trojan, backdoor, et cetera - the spec

  • Bah (Score:5, Funny)

    by wirelessbuzzers (552513) on Monday September 04 2006, @02:51PM (#16039402)
    Bah. They could have been slightly more subtle. I mean, three frames in a row? For Pete's sake, how stupid do they think we are?

  • For the impatient (Score:3, Informative)

    by Southpaw018 (793465) * on Monday September 04 2006, @02:52PM (#16039411) Journal
    Here's the four frames extracted.
    Main image [moofit.com]
    Subliminal image 1 [moofit.com]
    Subliminal image 2 [moofit.com]
    Subliminal image 3 [moofit.com]

    The subliminal images are shown for a fraction of a second every few seconds.
    • Looks like something made by a 15year old in coreldraw.

      Well, whoever really spends time to read that godaweful "text" picture deserves to be "brain manipulated"

  • Block all Images (Score:3, Insightful)

    by telchine (719345) on Monday September 04 2006, @02:53PM (#16039412)
    OCR is a ridiculous solution. It can be easily combatted by spammers in the same way the CAPTCHA images defeat OCR techniques.

    My solution:

    For email addresses that are on spam databases, I block all emails that contain images at the MTA level.

    Anyone who has good reason to be sending me images will know my non spam-infested address.

     

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mkavanagh2 (776662)
      CAPTCHA images defeat OCR techniques? To my knowledge most text-image CAPTCHAs don't defeat sophisticated OCR and those that do are hardly likely to be easily readable enough to spam any but the most gullible to any effect.

  • Not subliminal! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Glock27 (446276) on Monday September 04 2006, @02:54PM (#16039419)
    I can clearly see the words flash when the .gif animates.

    Therefore, it's not subliminal, since the flashed frame is supposed to be imperceptible to the conscious mind.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by chriscoolc (954268)
      Not to help them out, but next time they need to leave the main text visible in the subliminal images.
    • Had TFA not told you they'd be there, would you have noticed?

      I think in this case, probably yes, but I was waiting for it like you probably were. I think someone actually reading the message (that's to say, the type stupid enough to take stock advice in spam seriously) might just think it was a light flickering.
      • Had TFA not told you they'd be there, would you have noticed?


        Noticed that the text you are reading dissappears for a very long moment?

        Yes of course. When you have to stop reading because the text disappears, I would say it is very noticable.
  • Email spam has turned into an arms race of who can outrun the spam assassin developers. Will flash email be the next big thing? I sure hope not.

    Really, the best thing I ever did in my email client was to turn off image loading.

    --
    Arizona Web Design [initusdesign.com]

    • I sure hope it is. Whoever uses an e-mail client that displays inline Flash deserves to get spammed and malwared to death.

  • Not quite subliminal (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04 2006, @03:00PM (#16039453)
    How many people would actually sit and look at this image for 17 seconds? It only takes a fraction of a second to realize it's junk.

    Did the blogger even READ the wikipedia article linked to? It says "These messages are indiscernible to the conscious mind". I can almost count the number of BUYs in the image.

    I bet this is more of an attempt to get around OCR spam detectors that don't support animated gifs.

  • Interesting (Score:4, Informative)

    by mugnyte (203225) on Monday September 04 2006, @03:01PM (#16039458) Homepage Journal

      I seriously doubt the capbilities of a GIF to recreate a true subliminal advertisement. It's a bit dependent on the screen position, machine load, audience's focus, etc. With a movie or a a captured TV audience, it's a bit stronger. Also, this isn't a metaphorical allure, but simply a crude flashing.

    For some things subliminal messages can work. [sleeplearning.com] For others, it is well-known to be completely ineffective. [about.com]

    I doubt this is going to be much of a difference in SPAM, and is rather a sales differentiation point for a mass marketeer. Somebody is paying extra for this, for sure.
  • The thing about subliminal advertising, as I understand it, is that it needs to be subliminal which is defined as 'existing or operating below the threshold of consciousness' and with the advertising frame in this example being observable by the human eye, it's hardly a threat. However, while this particular example is ridiculously amateurish, it got me to wondering if it is possible for someone who isn't a dolt to create something more insidious and effective. Is there a fixed framerate for animated gifs?

    • Re:Cause for concern? (Score:5, Informative)

      by parallax (8950) on Monday September 04 2006, @03:24PM (#16039569) Homepage
      No, there is no cause for concern.

      I did a Ph.D. on the use of preattentive perception (read "subliminal") on just-in-time memory support. This was the "Memory Glasses" project that got a bunch of media attention a few years ago -- you may have even seen me pitching it to Alan Alada on PBS's Scientific American Frontiers "you can make it on your own" [pbs.org] episode.

      The long and short of it is that, yes -- properly encoded, "subliminal messages" can jog your memory, but no, they don't otherwise work as sug,gestions or influence your behavior. If you're curious, you can actually read my dissertation on the Memory Glasses [devaul.net] and find out more.

      There was a lot of hype in the 70's and 80's about the evils of subliminal marketing, but it was all based on junk science with forged data.

  • Slashdot a better spam blocker (Score:4, Funny)

    by gardyloo (512791) on Monday September 04 2006, @03:02PM (#16039466)
    If only we can just have every one of these things submitted to /. The resulting slashdotting will simply remove their servers. Easy!

  • New slashdot business model (Score:4, Informative)

    by mnmn (145599) on Monday September 04 2006, @03:02PM (#16039467) Homepage
    (1) Send out spam using a new technique
    (2) Post on slashdot telling people about the spam
    (3) Get enormous viewership
    (4) Profit!

    Just wait for the new Viagra technologies slashdot articles.
    • Just wait for the new Viagra technologies slashdot articles.

      1. Most /.ers are too young to worry about Viagra.
      2. Most /.ers are too single to worry about Viagra.

      Using a very special algorerythem (patent pending, tm, etc.) I have determined that:
      A. There are 12 married /.ers over 40,
      B. Four married posters under 40
      B. Two guys that are dating (not each other)
      C. Two girls who reads Slashdot.

      Of course, some AC posts might be from people who really do have accounts, so these numbers may be inflated.
  • sub-human to fall for that.

  • ... their non-gif stuff. I'm not about to buy a stock which is advertised with multiple exclamation !!! marks. And with incomplete sentences.
    • ... their non-gif stuff. I'm not about to buy a stock which is advertised with multiple exclamation !!! marks. And with incomplete sentences.

      I would hope that you wouldn't buy anything that was advertised via spam, regardless of the apparent quality of presentation. However, consider this: a lot of the spam I see is nearly unintelligible, because the intelligible spam already got blocked by my spam filtering.
  • After a couple of training messages, dspam is picking these spams (with or without the animated gif) with great accuracy. Even if dspam has no idea what the spam message is saying, these spam messages are sufficiently different from any of my normal e-mail that they stand out very much to the baysian algorithms.
  • Who looks at a piece of spam for the 17 seconds required to view the 'subliminal' advertising frames?

  • No, it doesn't. (Score:5, Informative)

    by DynaSoar (714234) * on Monday September 04 2006, @03:17PM (#16039533) Journal
    > Does it work?

    Rarely and barely. Under very controlled conditions, with very careful measurement, a very slight effect which lasts a very short time can sometimes be found. However, most of the conditions under which people attempt to use it are so uncontrolled (ie. the entirety of whatever environment you're in is affecting you) that there'd be no way to detect the usually tiny effect. If anyone claims it has effect in such a situation, they have no clue how it works, and are probably trying to sell advertising to someone who is so desparate that they have even less of a clue.

    The reality of the matter doesn't keep it from happening. Greed drives people to try things that would make even a habitual lottery ticket buyer snicker. For many years (and still, as far as I know) advertisers of tobacco and alcohol would have grotesque death images airbrushed into their magazine and billboard ads. This was based on the dual assumption that subliminals work, and Freud's theory that there was a ubiquitous "death wish", and it was stronger and more prone to manipulation in people who used these substances.

    We've dispresnsed with the first, given that magazines and billboards are hardly "controlled" environments. Freud dispensed with the second before he died, years before this was ever attempted.

    Despite overwhelming odds against it, advertisers still paid to have these images inserted into their ads. I know of one couple who worked at a commercial art house in New York who made $125,000 together in 1978 doing nothing but these. Large corporations will gamble large amounts way out of proportion for any real return just to grab a tenth of a per cent from competitors. John Sculley's biography about his Pepsi days talks about this greed effect (though not subliminals).

    The very first "attempt at subliminals" (the "popcorn and Coke" experiment in a movie theater) was a hoax. Like all such material, it is properly filed on snopes.com, along with the rest of the story. http://www.snopes.com/business/hidden/popcorn.asp [snopes.com]
  • Everyone's noticed the recent flood of image spam...

    I haven't. I can't even remember the last spam message I've seen, period--not even in my throwaway accounts.
  • No

    Even if it gets past my spam filters the moment I see rubbish like this it gets deleted. If I want stock picks I employ a professional, not a scum sucking spammer.

    Ed Almos
  • I just kill any flashing gifs.

    Typically if the site requires flash I skip it. I find it unbeleiveable that Macromedia didn't put in an option to kill unwanted flash. But I guess this says something about the company. So - one day I'll just neuter flash in this browser when I get pissed off enough to do it.

    I had to laugh at poking fun at a real estate agent. He has an awful website. I told him if he wants to sell to me then his website isn't doing its job.

    One has to hit them where it counts - right in t
  • Ok...we all know how creative and inventive spammers have gotten, and yes, I realize it only takes a couple of idiots to make it profitable...but come on...you REALLY have to wonder WHO IN THE HELL IS BUYING INTO THIS?!

    Honestly, not only is a lot of the spam completely unintelligible, but it just looks so phony its hard not to laugh. Does anybody on /. personally know anybody who's actually purchased something from spam? What about the really bad retarded spam like this?

    I know I should never underestimate

  • Most successful ever (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dcapel (913969) on Monday September 04 2006, @03:45PM (#16039662) Homepage
    That piece of spam is possibly the most cost-effective individual piece of spam ever: the spammer sent it to one person and gets 25000+ views of it instead.

  • For a good laugh, read their SEC filing (Score:5, Informative)

    by Animats (122034) on Monday September 04 2006, @04:55PM (#16039981) Homepage
    Here's their most recent quarterly SEC filing. [sec.gov]

    Fun highlights:

    • Urbanesq.com Inc. ("Urbanesq") was incorporated August 25, 2000 under the laws of the Province of Canada. Effective October 18, 2001, Urbanesq completed a merger with Koala International Wireless Inc. ("Koala"), a public company incorporated in the State of Nevada...changed the name of the Company to Trimax Corporation...
    • On July 29, 2005, the Company entered into an Exclusive Supply agreement ... provided the Company with the exclusive right to sell Switzerland based Ascom broadband over power line communication access products ("Products") in Canada and non-exclusive rights world wide, which the "Partner" represented that it had secured itself from Ascom. ... Subsequent to the signing and the advancement of funds for the "Exclusive Supply Agreement" the company was made aware that the product supplier had no right to grant a sub-license from Ascom. Furthermore, the supplier was previously in default and was never in any position to grant any sub-license on its own license.
    • The Company has not earned any revenues from limited principal operations...
    • Total Current Assets: $105,115. Total current liabilities: $536,870.

    So, after six years, the company has zero revenue and couldn't even get set up as a second-tier reseller of broadband over powerline products. Which is probably why the stock is at $0.38 and headed down.

    If you go back to older related SEC filings, you can find the story of the "Hipster portable Internet access device" (didn't happen), and the previous history of Koala International Wireless as a vitamin company under the name "Kettle River Group" (also a flop).

    This stock is not "poised for a breakthrough". Except maybe in the down direction.

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