SOT: Image Spam: Stocks

[am.lists]

On 3/2/07, Dan Hollis <spamtrap71892316634 at anime.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Mar 2007, Gerard Seibert wrote:
> > On Fri, 2 Mar 2007 19:48:09 -0500
> > "am.lists" <am.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Being the case, at least with this one, I have to wonder how it is
> >> that the spammers feel this is worth spending their botnets' bandwidth
> Wouldn't that make them easy to track and prosecute for pump&dump?
>
> -Dan

Let's see... I'm not a lawyer, nor an expert on SEC matters, but from
what I can tell, most of the tickers go to over the counter (OTC) or
other off-the-wall markets that might not be subject to the same trade
regulations as a NASDAQ or NYSE-traded issue. That might make them
subject to a different book of rules.  Even so, I would think the
trades should be trackable.

 I just think of the money, time, and effort that has went into the
systems that distribute this stuff.  For one, the combination of plain
text, then the obfuscated/bogus html tags, and now, the inline gifs
with dynamically generated text (ok, so ImageMagic isn't exactly
rocket science) and now the skewed text... they really are a
formidable and somewhat sophisticated foe.

Actually, now that I'm reading what I'm typing, I'm wondering if there
might be some common signature to a gif or other output from the
dynamic text, aside from scanning it through OCR software. Sort of
like how you can ascertain that a PDF was saved by a certain version
of Acrobat or something. I know GIF specifies GIF87, 89, and 89a...
has anyone came across something common? Just thinking that there
should be a way to add one more rule/check that might help our cause.

Angelo