The Cyrillic Question

October 23, 2007 @ 6:10 am · Filed under journal

Dear gmail:

I don’t know any Russians.
All that mail you keep delivering?
The stuff in Russian?
That’s spam.

Thanks,
Josh

6 Comments »

  1. Emily Said,

    October 23, 2007 @ 10:06 am

    Josh! You don’t know any Russians? For shame!

    Maybe what Gmail is trying to do is nudge you in the direction of befriending a Russian.

  2. Josh Millard Said,

    October 23, 2007 @ 5:00 pm

    The truth is I’ve tried. But they always say нет!

  3. Joel Said,

    October 23, 2007 @ 8:07 pm

    I’m always befriending Russians, if you know what I mean.

  4. andy cochrane Said,

    October 27, 2007 @ 11:35 am

    double true! i get spam in several languages i do not actually speak- you’d think this would be just a little bit easier to defend against than normal spam, eh?

  5. andy cochrane Said,

    October 29, 2007 @ 10:05 am

    ok it gets worse- we are now getting Cyrillic spam comments on our blog- and they are blasting through akismet and our other spam protections without any effort… shouldn’t it be the opposite way around? shouldn’t comments in a different language be automatically suspect, and at the very least held back for moderation?

  6. Josh Millard Said,

    October 29, 2007 @ 10:08 am

    I’m guessing we’re seeing the slow trend of catchup in action here. I don’t know what specific techniques either gmail or akismet is using, but spamtrapping’s a reactionary game; they have to get by you before you can figure out how they’re getting by you.

    Hopefully it’ll tail off in a months time or so. Freakin’ spammers.

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