Reminder - Smaug FUSS domains

Just a reminder to all - the domains to reach the Smaug FUSS site in the past have begun to expire and all links pointing to them should be dropped as soon as possible.

Al links should now be pointed at:
http://www.smaugmuds.org/

The expired or expiring domains include:

smaugfuss.com - points to a porn site now.
smaugfuss.org - taken over by GoDaddy and being used as a spam portal.
fussproject.org - still mine but will be retired. If it's not too much of a hassle, can these be replaced in the forum DB?
afkmud.com - same as fussproject.org, would like to get these globally replaced if possible.
afkmud.net, afkmud.org - never used, but there's a couple of outstanding links to them here.

If you have any bookmarks leading to these domains, please update them. If you've linked to any of them, please update your links as well. Giving Google rank to spammers and porn merchants is bad :)

Samson, you might want to take a look at your source code.

I did a grep of smaugfuss in the v 1.9 smaugfuss source and found 9 hits, for example:




Also one hit in help.are file.

I fixed the forum headers (2 places I think), and went and searched old forum messages and added an explanatory note to each one that referrred to smaugfuss.org - people tend to Google the actual messages rather than necessarily reading all the announcements.

Well that is kind of strange. A while ago I had a fair bit of spam from shoe manufacturers which I couldn't understand until someone pointed out that if you were having problems with "mud" then some better shoes might help. ;)

Not sure about the connection between "smaugfuss" and porn, though.

Yeah, I don't get the connection either. I think someone just seized upon the domain because it was there. I never used it for anything though so it never had any link traffic. It was only likely to get hit as a .com oops for the .org address.

Also, I posted updated FUSS packages with that domain and some other booboos fixed as well. That's actually part of what reminded me I needed to clean this stuff up a bit :)

The page at http://www.gammon.com.au/downloads/dlsmaug.htm needs to be updated as well if you don't mind.

Best guess would be that it's a closeness between Smaug & Smut, but when it comes to porn sites, I think they've reasonably established already that ANY potential address they can use will work for them regardless of what, or if, the connection might be.

Right, I think the idea is just to grab domains that have been used, on the assumption that people will visit them again, and thereby be exposed to the, err, "wares" the sites in question are peddling. I'm not sure that they look for any connections in this case. But for other cases, sure, they try to find common typos and register those. (In fairness, this is what all domain squatters do, not just porn sites.)

Whatever the case, it certainly does seem as though their methods are effective enough to make them a fair bit of dough.

You know, I always wonder who it is that makes money for spammers... how many people actually buy into the "wares" sold by email spammers? Scammers are one thing, they can make fairly good phish mail for people not in the know, but the spammers tend to be quite transparent... hmm... I guess it doesn't take much for them to recuperate their costs.

The domain stuff at least makes sense: it costs quite little, and the advertisement traffic could be worth something to somebody, especially if you have a domain name that closely resembles a very visited site.

That has now been updated.

I wouldn't expect that most spammers have any "wares" to make money off of but that the majority make their money from click-through advertisements and such. *shrug*

Remember, even if only 1/2 of 1% of the emails you send generate a single penny for you, sending 50 million will still generate $2,500 without any expense outlay, and the odds are that you'll actually not only score better than half of a percent but also that you'll be paid better than a penny per "sale". Does blatant spamming make more sense in that light? (Postal mail advertising agencies claim that their mailers generate 3-6% return so, email spammers have no reason to expect less than half that response, right?)

Almost all the spam I've gotten has been trying to sell something; I thought that was kind of the point of spam. :-)

I know about the numeric argument. What surprises me is not the numeric argument, but that even 0.5% of people would purchase the spam products. I also don't know about the comparison with snail mail: snail-mail spam tends to be in correct English, with nice pictures and so forth; email spam on the other hand is quite unappealing due to all the tricks they use to get around filters. As an example: are you more likely to purchase something from somebody who can barely put together a sentence, let alone a whole email, or from somebody who presents you with a clean and polished interface?

All the spam you've gotten has been trying to sell you something, right there in the email, eh? No need to visit a web site at all then?

You may have a point about the numbers, the spam that's mailed to folks is generally much more professionally though I was trying to take that into account with the significantly smaller estimate, still, even if sending a spam email out only generated you a few dollars rather than a few hundred or thousand, while there is the risk these days for legal repercussions, overall it "costs" nothing to try and has the potential to bring in serious money.

Oh well, I imagine that it's not really worth trying to get too into analyzing the mindset of the spammer anyway.

I think he means in the sense that a TV ad is trying to sell you something. However you need to go to the shop to actually make the purchase.

Yes, that puzzles me too. It is like there are people who say "hey! - if I send my name and address and bank account details to someone in Nigeria, they will put $10 million in my account!" .... as if.

The other thing that puzzles me is people who think the various lotions/pills that are designed to make your, ah, "equipment" larger, will actually help you get (more) girlfriends. I mean, how do you introduce that into the conversation in the first place? Do you walk up to a girl and say "hi! - I have just taken my Viagra, so you won't have to worry about my performance". Somehow I can't see that line working.

Of course, this is on top of my genuine skepticism that the product you order would actually be delivered in the first place. Or, that it would work, if it was.

Exactly! It's a mystery to me why people actually think it would work. And like you say, why they think the stuff would actually even arrive (assuming it worked). If you got a paper note written in terrible English that was filled with random book citations and crazy formatting, would you feel confident sending them a check?

And yes I also find it quite amusing to think of how one would advertise the "enhancements" in question. :-)



And yes, I did mean what you said about the comparison to TV ads.

You know, Mr. Barnum once said something about a sucker being born every minute.. I suspect his proclamation still holds for spam recipients too.

As for the television advertisement analogy.. I see, I suppose in that sense, I don't see how your statement:



is really saying anything directly different than my statement was:

It sounds like the difference between making money by selling you something and making money by showing you something.

In one instance, the spammer makes money when you buy something, but in the other, the spammer makes money simply by showing you something (if you happen to click on it.)

Yes, Darwin put his finger on it, that is the difference I was trying to point out.


Yes, you are probably right about that! :) It still kind of boggles my mind that somebody would think it a good idea to send money to some random dude in Nigeria... the purported prince of the country, no less! :)

I suppose if the spammer happens to also be the person behind the site they're sending you to then they would have their own 'wares', but I suspect most spam doesn't come directly from the sites selling the actual products but from folks generating traffic for those sites for the click-through payments and/or commission payments. Either way, this is all conjecture anyway, no?

The truly genius spammers will have something to sell *AND* make money off of your click-thru as well. :)

Why anyone falls for the crap is beyond me, but then as they say, it takes brains to be dangerous.