{"id":10,"date":"2005-04-04T06:26:11","date_gmt":"2005-04-04T10:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/2005\/04\/04\/interesting-use-of-google-adsense\/"},"modified":"2005-04-04T06:26:11","modified_gmt":"2005-04-04T10:26:11","slug":"interesting-use-of-google-adsense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/2005\/04\/04\/interesting-use-of-google-adsense\/","title":{"rendered":"Interesting use of Google AdSense"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

In what little spare time I have I engage in a “service” of
\nsorts.  It started when I did some analysis of the spam I was
\ngetting.  I noticed several 419 scams (the get rich quick
\nschemes from nigeria) and from some poking around I arrived at a site
\ncalled 419eater.com.  I became involved as a sort of hobby and
\nscam
\nbait a few hours a week now.  The idea is that we can come up with
\nsome great ways to divert the attentions of these scammers so they
\ndon’t focus on real victims.  Not really Batman style crime
\nfighting
\nbut if you read the forum you will find some interesting stories
\n(including arrests).<\/p>\n

How does this relate in any way to
\nAdSense?  I’m getting there.  One of the main tools used in
\nthis fight is throw
\naway webmail accounts.  Well I finally found a use for those 50
\ninvites!  I have created some persona and use these as trap
\nboxes to lure potential scammers.  I glanced at the ads while
\nscanning a new scammer email and I saw the following:<\/p>\n

Nigerian Scam<\/p>\n

Article in PC Magazine Read it online. Free Trial!
Woman scammed out of $5,000 in Temecula
Temecula Press-Enterprise (subscription)-Mar 30, 2005<\/p>\n

 The victim was talked into giving the strangers money
\nto…<\/p>\n

I can only hope that some poor victim gets a look at this and realizes
\nthat not everything is above board.
This
\ntopic came up in one of classes recently, not the scam baiting
\nbut the ad sense.  Many in the room were not comfortable with the
\nidea that a program was searching through the email and offering
\nrelevent ads.  None seemed concerned that other bots were
\nprogramatically looking at their email for virii or searching their
\ncredit card activity for “inconsistent” spending.  Personally the
\nlast
\none bothers me more then anything else.  If I am truely concerned
\nabout my email (especially webmail which we should all think of as non
\nprivate) then I can encrypt the messages.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In what little spare time I have I engage in a “service” of sorts.  It started when I did some analysis of the spam I was getting.  I noticed several 419 scams (the get rich quick schemes from nigeria) and from some poking around I arrived at a site called 419eater.com.  I became involved as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":214,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/214"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}