Dot Comms

Spamming clever

February 9, 2010 | Written by Ged Carroll

I have an obsessive compulsive relationship with Flickr. It powers the images on this blog and acts as a kind of visual diary for me. It powers the communications that I have with some of my friends such as my former colleague Bronney Hui. So it was only a matter of time before it was used to spam marketing messages out there. However, this spam is clever by nature.

The user signed up for a Flickr account, favorited one of my pictures and added me as a contact. With flickr this connection doesn’t need to be reciprocated. After a suitable amount of time they then notified me by Flickr of a set that they had created that they thought I would be interested in.

This set consisted of two trailers for “Shen Yun Performing Arts”. I was struck by how much more involved the process of creating this spam was compared to the usual email. This is cross-posted from my personal blog renaissance chambara.

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