Spam from a MeFi user.

July 16, 2008 4:32 PM

I don't know what the policy is on this but I just got this spam via MeFi email from someone I don't know or care to know:

You have a new message from MeFi member br0chet:

Hi, I'm a distributor located in province of Quebec. If you're looking for
games like gba, ds, xbox 360, ps3, wii, bluray disc or dvds movies i can
probably help you. I sell a lot to online sellers and always looking for new clients. I agree payment via paypal without a trouble.
--
br0chet
http://www.metafilter.com/user/77481

posted by stbalbach to Etiquette/Policy at 4:32 PM (98 comments total)

Justice will be swift and merciless.
posted by LarryC at 4:33 PM on July 16, 2008

Yeah this is completely and totally against the rules.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 4:35 PM on July 16, 2008

Banned.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 4:36 PM on July 16, 2008

Ugh. His first day?
posted by klangklangston at 4:40 PM on July 16, 2008

I will miss him.
posted by Astro Zombie at 4:44 PM on July 16, 2008 [11 favorites]

I agree payment via paypal without a trouble.

Yeah, but the red drapes look better.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:47 PM on July 16, 2008

Sigh, I never get mail...
posted by R. Mutt at 4:50 PM on July 16, 2008

Maybe new users should have a restriction on using MefiMail until a certain contribution amount is reached like posting on the front page?
posted by rooftop secrets at 4:52 PM on July 16, 2008

Or add a way to flag messages in your inbox as spam like comments/posts.
posted by rooftop secrets at 4:54 PM on July 16, 2008 [2 favorites]

Individual spam mail? I think he misses the whole point o' spam.
posted by R. Mutt at 4:54 PM on July 16, 2008 [4 favorites]

I will miss him.

Any man's banning diminishes me, because I am involved in Metatalk, and therefore never send to know for whom the ban hammers; it hammers for thee.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 4:54 PM on July 16, 2008 [35 favorites]

On the new user application just ask "What was the very first MetaFilter post about?" No spammer is going to spend time educating themself on obscure MeFi history.
posted by crapmatic at 4:57 PM on July 16, 2008 [4 favorites]

They don't allow outside spam into Quebec. They make their own.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:00 PM on July 16, 2008 [3 favorites]

I'm just sayin' I also agree payment via paypal without a trouble. Hook me up.
posted by Divine_Wino at 5:02 PM on July 16, 2008

I wonder if he'll recoup his $5 from all the new "clients" he was able to round up today on MeFi?
posted by jpdoane at 5:15 PM on July 16, 2008

That was the most expensive spam ever; usually spam costs nothing.
posted by davejay at 5:18 PM on July 16, 2008

Outside spam is allowed into Quebec. It's just not allowed to be pink, lest consumers mistake it for real meat.
posted by CKmtl at 5:30 PM on July 16, 2008 [2 favorites]

/sends everyone a tubgirl pic
posted by bardic at 5:46 PM on July 16, 2008

wow. how disappointing! i mean, i don't get much mefi mail and it's pretty exciting when i do. at least it used to be pretty exciting.
posted by msconduct at 5:54 PM on July 16, 2008

Maybe new users should have a restriction on using MefiMail until a certain contribution amount is reached like posting on the front page?

I can see drawbacks to that. A limit on mefi-mail capability to 2 a day or something until the account has been active for a few months might work.
posted by BrotherCaine at 5:55 PM on July 16, 2008

*MefiMails msconduct a low low price subscription offer to pretend pen pal*
posted by BrotherCaine at 5:56 PM on July 16, 2008

I WAS INTERESTED!
posted by tkchrist at 6:06 PM on July 16, 2008

I doubt mefi mail spam is common enough to warrant policy changes.
posted by ryanrs at 6:07 PM on July 16, 2008

... yet
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 6:09 PM on July 16, 2008

Hey, that wasn't tubgirl! That was a Rick Astley video!

MORBO DEMANDS SATISFACTION
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:12 PM on July 16, 2008

So do I put this on Musings of a Metafilter Spammer or not?
posted by Effigy2000 at 6:26 PM on July 16, 2008

Spammers make me reconsider my opposition to the death penalty.
posted by Skorgu at 6:34 PM on July 16, 2008

Man, I still didn't get any mail. Ain't nobody got no love.
posted by dismas at 6:38 PM on July 16, 2008

If only user 'poutine' could have talked to him, br0chet wouldn't have gone down this self-destructive path.
posted by lukemeister at 6:39 PM on July 16, 2008

They don't allow outside spam into Quebec. They make their own.

I think you mean: Ils ne permettent pas le spam étranger au Québec. Ils fabriquent leur propre spam.
posted by languagehat at 6:41 PM on July 16, 2008 [6 favorites]

Canadians, man.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 6:43 PM on July 16, 2008

br0chet systematically went down the list one by one, knowing that if he could get the movers and shakers of the Internet to buy his products, he could finance his dream of Quebecois independence.
posted by lukemeister at 6:43 PM on July 16, 2008

As others have said, at $5 per spam, this is a great way to fund the site. Let the current policy continue. Hell, set up a form for the crap and redirect to /dev/null after the paypal clears.
posted by odinsdream at 6:46 PM on July 16, 2008

I didn't get one either. Man, I miss out on all the fun around here!

*sulks*
posted by Quietgal at 7:28 PM on July 16, 2008

Oh, I forgot about the $5 barrier. I withdraw my half-thought out idea. $5 is enough of a barrier anyway.
posted by crapmatic at 7:34 PM on July 16, 2008

Individual spam mail? I think he misses the whole point o' spam.

Doubtful. How hard would it be to write a script to do this?
posted by Afroblanco at 8:21 PM on July 16, 2008

Michael Bay could make that script look real good
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:23 PM on July 16, 2008 [1 favorite]

As others have said, at $5 per spam, this is a great way to fund the site.

Except for the part where these jerks report my account to paypal for "services not delievered/product not as described" which locks my account, launches arbitration proceedings, and paypal generally becomes a huge headache for a week or two until paypal gives the spammer a refund for breaking site policies.

It drives me nuts, because they accuse me of fraud for banning them and paypal usually takes their side. I have something like 10,000 successful transactions and I still get the feeling paypal is going to shut down my account one of these days because of the weird guilty-until-proven-innocent way they treat me as a "seller" that is being accused of as "fraudulent". It's worth staying with paypal because everyone has an account and it works easily for most people (and acts as a great bozo filter for keeping out casual vandals/noise from the site), but I do sometimes wish there were more alternatives.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:30 PM on July 16, 2008 [6 favorites]

Outside spam is allowed into Quebec. It's just not allowed to be pink

that's why in your can of quebec spam, you're give a pink liquid capsule, so you can dye your spam pink, although some jokers prefer to save it for someone else's poutine
posted by pyramid termite at 8:31 PM on July 16, 2008

lukemeister writes "br0chet systematically went down the list one by one,"

Geez, amberglow hasn't made a comment for months and he's still at the top of the list.
posted by Mitheral at 8:37 PM on July 16, 2008

Matt: Google checkout?
posted by Mid at 8:38 PM on July 16, 2008

We all need to send Matt 5 more dollars so that he will have over 20,000 successful transactions. Make it an early ten year anniversary gift...

What do ya say team??
posted by pearlybob at 9:01 PM on July 16, 2008

I got a message the other day saying that magic pills could engorge my whale bone with lusty mermaid's milk but that was just Divine Wino showing me his Markov.
posted by The Straightener at 9:24 PM on July 16, 2008

I agree payment via paypal without a trouble.

I dunno, he seemed like a pretty easy-going, cool dude. And what if I did want some Xbox 360 games? And lived in Canada.
posted by turgid dahlia at 9:31 PM on July 16, 2008

Vincent: You know what they call Spam in Quebec?
Jules: They don't call it Spam?
Vincent: No man, they got the metric system. They wouldn't know what the fuck spam is.
Jules: Then what do they call it?
Vincent: They call it Scrapple.
posted by boo_radley at 9:46 PM on July 16, 2008 [12 favorites]

Hey, wait, if he's from Quebec, shouldn't that spam be required to be bilingual, or something?
posted by cobaltnine at 9:50 PM on July 16, 2008 [1 favorite]

Matt, don't they offer you an easy way to just give the money back, or revert the transaction yourself or something?

I wonder what you'll do once spammers and trolls start pouring into the ultra-special-ultra-secret $5000 site noone knows about.
posted by qvantamon at 9:57 PM on July 16, 2008

You could set it up so that initial signup was $5 plus a $20 promissary note. You get you $20 refunded after a month of keeping your promise (which you make at signup) not to be a spammer or SEO jerk.
posted by Meatbomb at 10:07 PM on July 16, 2008

"We all need to send Matt 5 more dollars so that he will have over 20,000 successful transactions. Make it an early ten year anniversary gift...

What do ya say team??"
posted by pearlybob at 3:01 PM on July 17

A very nice idea, but what would perhaps be more useful is if we did a form letter which users could copy/paste and then e-mail to PayPal pointing out spammers know that if they break the rules of this site, which include spamming, they will lose their account and not get a refund. Links to the FAQ and the message you get when you click 'Sign Up' demonstrating this should be included.

20,000 letters of support (or even just 500) would likely go a long way towards ensuring Matt doesn't have to deal with the kind of headaches he described.
posted by Effigy2000 at 10:40 PM on July 16, 2008

I'm just sayin' I also agree payment via paypal without a trouble. Hook me up.

Untrue. I put your profile e-mail into the Paypal and there was indeed a trouble when it didn't find any account. Now it's too late. You've missed out.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 10:46 PM on July 16, 2008 [1 favorite]

20,000 letters of support (or even just 500) would likely go a long way towards ensuring Matt doesn't have to deal with the kind of headaches he described.

Or would convince the bureaucrats at PayPal that he wasn't worth the trouble, seeing as how he was indirectly generating all this mail in their mailboxes, and find some bs reason to kick him out. You know, either or.

What if we just all donate $8ish to his campaign?
posted by davejay at 10:56 PM on July 16, 2008

What is all this? I'm just looking for a used car.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 12:27 AM on July 17, 2008 [1 favorite]

I agree payment via paypal without a trouble.

You are full of the shit!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:29 AM on July 17, 2008

Is there any hope of finding out how many emails this guy sent? I'm curious whether it was less than 50 or so (which might indicate that it was all manually sent), or more than that (which might indicate that he figured out a way to automate the process).
posted by philomathoholic at 1:18 AM on July 17, 2008

Matt, I reluctantly let my PP account go to seed. Just too much badness around that company. Comiserations.
posted by telstar at 2:08 AM on July 17, 2008

Metafilter: bozo filter, we haz one
posted by chillmost at 3:38 AM on July 17, 2008

Silly boo. Scrapple is a cuisine unique to the Fluffia* region. To suggest it might be of Canadian origin is to invite a whole lotta hurt from a bunch of burly Iggles** fans. No wudder oyse*** for you, chief.




* Philadelphia
** Eagles
*** Water ice
posted by shiu mai baby at 4:37 AM on July 17, 2008

One work-around for the Paypal "services not delievered/product not as described" issue might be to sell an initial subscription of 1 hour, then give an automatic free re-subscription for life to subscribers as long as they don't break the guidelines.

It's kind of silly-sounding, but then at least if you ban someone after the first hour of subscription, it's none of Paypal's business.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 5:33 AM on July 17, 2008

20,000 letters of support (or even just 500) would likely go a long way towards ensuring Matt doesn't have to deal with the kind of headaches he described.

I dunno, $50,000 goes a long way in alleviating headaches as well.
posted by mrmojoflying at 6:15 AM on July 17, 2008

Why not use a captcha to validate each MeMail? That would slow down any spam scripting.

I don't think that I've ever sent a MeMail, so forgive me if Metafilter is already doing this.

Oh, right. MeTa and forgiveness are mutually exclusive. I forgot.
posted by SteveTheRed at 6:28 AM on July 17, 2008

bea is a genius! What an awesome ToS that would be to write.
posted by popechunk at 6:36 AM on July 17, 2008

referring to this comment
posted by popechunk at 6:37 AM on July 17, 2008

I know that, shiu mai baby, but it was either Scrapple, or Canadian Spam. I work with what I have, I guess. I mean, "No, they call it Canadian Spam" can't make sense if they don't know what Spam is, cause they won't have the frame of reference. And the only thing remotely close to Spam, I think, is scrapple.

Nevertheless, I thank you for your feedback. It has been noted.
posted by boo_radley at 6:48 AM on July 17, 2008

Vincent: You know what they call Spam in Quebec?
Jules: They don't call it Spam?
Vincent: No man, they got the metric system. They wouldn't know what the fuck spam is.
Jules: Then what do they call it?
Vincent: They call it Scrapple.

Actually, the only home-grown Quebec meat spread is Cretons, which sounds disgusting but is actually freaky good, especially on a hangover morning.

Any recipe that starts with the instruction remove the membrane from the fat and cut it into small pieces is a guaranteed winner in my book.
posted by Shepherd at 8:13 AM on July 17, 2008 [1 favorite]

"flush twice, it's a long way to the scrapple factory."

-spotted in bathroom of Baltimore, MD IHOP, mid 90s
posted by drjimmy11 at 8:20 AM on July 17, 2008 [2 favorites]

"No, they call it Canadian Spam" can't make sense if they don't know what Spam is, cause they won't have the frame of reference. And the only thing remotely close to Spam, I think, is scrapple.

Outside of Quebec and the above-cited Creton, the ROC actually enjoys delicious KAM, the all-Canadian meat in a can.
posted by Shepherd at 8:20 AM on July 17, 2008

I am learning so much. Thank you all.
posted by boo_radley at 8:38 AM on July 17, 2008

What if the $5 payment was for "instructions on how to become a metafilter member," which you email to them after they sign up. Then they can't claim they didn't receive what they were paying for.
posted by drezdn at 8:55 AM on July 17, 2008

Then they can't claim they didn't receive what they were paying for.

I think the point is that they CAN claim it and PayPal WILL give Matt crap, just because someone claimed it, as opposed to actually using common sense or reality.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:02 AM on July 17, 2008

Which is delightful, because every time that I've had trouble with paypal as a buyer, they immediately took the seller's side despite common sense or reality.
posted by klangklangston at 9:14 AM on July 17, 2008

I'm sure Paypal takes no side but their own. They tell the seller and buyer to shove it, and just keep the disputed money for themselves. Pure profit!
posted by Grither at 9:28 AM on July 17, 2008 [2 favorites]

It's worth staying with paypal because everyone has an account and it works easily for most people (and acts as a great bozo filter for keeping out casual vandals/noise from the site), but I do sometimes wish there were more alternatives.

It's called real money.
posted by shmegegge at 9:38 AM on July 17, 2008

It's called real money.

People can always send me five bucks in cash or unused postage stamps in the mail and get an account that way.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:44 AM on July 17, 2008

would I have to admit it's a sockpuppet?
posted by shmegegge at 9:59 AM on July 17, 2008

klangklangston: Which is delightful, because every time that I've had trouble with paypal as a buyer, they immediately took the seller's side despite common sense or reality.

Actually, by telling the seller they are taking the buyer's side, and telling the buyer they're taking the seller's side, PayPal take their own side and keep the money.

Keep that under your hat.
posted by splice at 10:03 AM on July 17, 2008

People can always send me five bucks in cash or unused postage stamps in the mail and get an account that way.

If I send Canadian Tire money, can I have 97.68% of a membership?
posted by Shepherd at 10:48 AM on July 17, 2008 [2 favorites]

You may want to rethink that pla.
posted by yhbc at 10:54 AM on July 17, 2008 [1 favorite]

This is why if you use Paypal you're not supposed to keep any money in there, and I'm told that when it gets to the point they make you put in your checking account, that's a poor idea unless you get a checking account only for Paypal and don't keep any money in there either.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 10:55 AM on July 17, 2008

People can always send me five bucks in cash or unused postage stamps in the mail and get an account that way.

What if we send in forever stamps? Could we send you one with the caveat that your don't use it until it's worth $5 or are they only worth $.41 cents or so?
posted by drezdn at 10:57 AM on July 17, 2008

I wonder if one would beat inflation by purchasing Forever stamps and finding a good time at which to sell them after price increases.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 11:12 AM on July 17, 2008

I wonder if...

According to AskMe, no.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:24 AM on July 17, 2008

People can always send me five bucks in cash or unused postage stamps in the mail and get an account that way.

what about unruly children?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:26 AM on July 17, 2008

People can send me ten bucks and get an unruly child that way too.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:30 AM on July 17, 2008 [4 favorites]

I read that as "unruly chicken".
posted by boo_radley at 11:47 AM on July 17, 2008

unruly chickens are twenty bucks. SAIT.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 12:00 PM on July 17, 2008 [2 favorites]

What kind of nunnery is this?
posted by boo_radley at 12:34 PM on July 17, 2008

In the old days someone would have posted an image below the unruly chicken comment.
posted by drezdn at 12:36 PM on July 17, 2008

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  /_    |               | /
   W\  /              |////
     \ \  __________||//|/
      \ \/         /|/-//-
       |     -----  // --
       |      -----   /-
       |     -----    /
        \            /
          \_/  \___/
            \  //
             |||
             |||
            Z_>>  

posted by BrotherCaine at 8:07 PM on July 17, 2008

Scrapple extends westward from philly at least as far as Ohio, where the weirdos put ketchup on it.
posted by BrotherCaine at 8:08 PM on July 17, 2008

A brave attempt at liberation, sadly failed.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 9:05 PM on July 17, 2008

from the Charter of the French Language (emphasis mine):

Public signs and posters and commercial advertising must be in French.

They may also be both in French and in another language provided that French is markedly predominant.

I don't see a French version anywhere there. Busted.
posted by oaf at 6:44 AM on July 18, 2008

The Charter of the French Language is in English?
posted by jeffamaphone at 9:35 AM on July 18, 2008

I think what's being said here is: Sacrament de tabarnac, câlice!
posted by anthill at 9:59 AM on July 18, 2008

Public signs and posters and commercial advertising...

It was private until stbalbach made it public, so the fault is his. A beating with stale baguettes will be scheduled at his earliest convenience.
posted by CKmtl at 10:56 AM on July 18, 2008

languagehat said: "Ils ne permettent pas le spam étranger au Québec. Ils fabriquent leur propre spam."

C'est pas "étrange"? Aussi, au Québec, la plupart de temps on dit "Ils permettent pas". (On peut omettre le "ne".)

(Mais chui pas une linguiste, ou d'ailleurs une francophone.)
posted by loiseau at 2:52 AM on July 19, 2008

"[Produit(s)] étranger(s)" and "[produit(s)] de l'étranger" are both fine, as far as I know.

As for the dropping of "ne", I think that's more a matter of slang and would prompt a swift claque from any French teacher or editor.
posted by CKmtl at 2:55 PM on July 19, 2008

Not mine in Quebec! But outside of that, probably yes.
posted by loiseau at 12:08 AM on July 20, 2008

By which I mean in casual conversation, same as T-V, which I understand is quite a bit broader here than in international French.
posted by loiseau at 12:12 AM on July 20, 2008