The Latest in IT Security

Tumblr Spam Offends, Causes Hilarity in Equal Measure

30
Jul
2012

The latest piece of Tumblr spam seen bouncing around in the last couple of hours isn’t going down too well with users:

Hear that, spam? AIN’T. NOBODY.

The above reaction is amazing enough, but then you look at the spam itself and spend about half an hour trying to decide if someone at the spam factory is a genius in memetic marketing or if the work placement intern was let loose on a national holiday:

Click to Enlarge

I won’t pay for McDonald’s but I’ll eat for free

so i did a mcdonalds survey here [URL removed] and they actually mailed me a gift card. so unhealthy but sooo yummy. i’m so fat. join me in my fight against anorexica and get one yourself [URL removed]“

“I’m so fat”? “Anorexica“? MIND BLOWN.

But wait, we’re not done yet:

“Let’s put on 51705170 pounds and be awesome fat bloggers.”

I think being an “awesome fat blogger” would be the least of your worries clocking in at that size, given that 51,705,170 pounds is equivalent to 3,693,226 stone / 23,453 tonnes and a sperm whale reaches about 40 tonnes maximum.

So anyway, the link takes you a standard gift card sign up:

Click to Enlarge

A few interesting things about this one:

1) The spam is also spreading on Twitter. At this point we’re not sure if there are two different methods used to spread (one for Tumblr, one for Twitter) or if Tumblrs posting the spam have the “Post to Twitter” feature enabled. Either way, there’s a fair bit of Twitter spam and it’s growing:

2) According to Bit.ly, there have been 251 clicks in the last couple of hours since it went live, primarily coming from the US (144), Canada (23) and Australia (17) with the majority of visits coming from Tumblr pages carrying the spam. Given how things are shaping up on Twitter, that could change rapidly.

3) The initial bit.ly link takes users to a page located on the official website of The Weeknd.

That would be an odd thing to have as a promotion, but we’ve dropped them a note to see if it’s supposed to be there or not. At any rate, steer clear of anorexica and bloggers who clock in at 51,705,170 pounds whether on Tumblr or Twitter.

And sperm whales, while you’re at it…

Christopher Boyd

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