jgc.org — This is a great example of subliminal advertising in a spam message. The spam contains an animated GIF with four frames. The spam contains an animated GIF with four frames. One of the frames (which contains the actual spam message) remains visible for 17 seconds. The other three frames are displayed for 10ms or 40ms, and each contain a message.
Sep 5, 2006 View in Crawl 4
reverandSep 5, 2006
How is this subliminal? It's perfectly obvious and something everyone would notice.
kgassoSep 6, 2006
Nice to see the digg community modding down someone for being accurate and descriptive.I've seen this with semi-blank/trash frames in the animation for several weeks now. It was done EXACTLY for this reason. I've investigated OCR image-scanning plugins to combat image spam. Most of the ones I tinkered with only see the first frame of an animated GIF.In this case, some clueless spammer probably thought it was prime real estate for another sales spiel.
pathdaemonSep 6, 2006
I don't usually stare at my spam for 17 seconds before reporting and deleting…
angusmSep 6, 2006
This is the next evolution of a spam technique designed to defeat OCR-based filters, such as SpamAssassin's fuzzy OCR. The first version of this didn't contain the "Buy! Buy!" message; it just contained a small number of very thin diagonal lines in random colors and orientations. The idea was that the use of an animated GIF would defeat the OCR programs (until they were updated) but the thin lines wouldn't distract human readers of the stock pitch. The "Buy! Buy!" frames are presumably intended to work the same way (although they're flashed up briefly and then replaced with the stock pitch, whereas in the diagonal-line variant the different frames were overlaid on each other). It may have been the spammer having fun, but I doubt it was intended as a serious attempt at subliminal advertising.Incidentally, these animated GIFs don't display correctly in many email clients (which only show the first frame). They do, however, display properly in a web browser: presumably the spammers are now going after webmail users.
superterranSep 6, 2006
"That was about f**king retarded."-Me, about twenty seconds ago.
s1mbaSep 6, 2006
Marked as innacurate because of yet another sensationalist headline that turns out to not even be remotely close to the truth.Granted, we all hate spam. But does what this message is doing even remotely come close to subliminal advertising? Not at all.It's immediately obvious what is there, and what it says. The eyes see it, and the concious mind sees it. The fact that the eye can clearly see the frames, and clearly see what they say make it not even remotely subliminal.And even then, of course, it has mostly been proven that subliminal advertising does not work.
asnowDec 5, 2007
Is this a weak joke? If you are reading that spam for 17 seconds you deserve a subliminal punch in the face. Delete.