On Sun, Aug 06, 2017 at 04:58:42PM +0200, Thomas Schmitt wrote: > Hi, > > reading more about Gmail Smart Reply in > https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/save-time-with-smart-reply-in-gmail/ > i got a new theory: > > The AI learns from the user's mail habits to be able to propose three > quick replies in the personal writing style of the user. > If you annoy the AI from outside (see also "Goozim" :)) then it will lure > the user into such a quick reply. > So the initiator learns a brief psychological profile of that user > in respect to obvious vulgarity and spam. > As a gmail user, I've been reading those auto-reply options on mails for a couple of years now, feels like. The Gmail auto-reply feature doesn't come up with the kind of thing we have been seeing on the list. It certainly doesn't put profanities in the replies, unlike some of the clearly frustrated repliers we have seen recently.
We are not seeing auto-replies here; I am with whichever Thomas it was that suggested this is genuine Muggles responding to spam that hijacked the debian-user email address as sender. That also neatly explains why we didn't see the original mail -- it wasn't sent TO debian-user, it was sent AS debian-user. And the ironic thing is I doubt the spammer even expects to be able to recover the replies in the end, in this case. Having to go to the archives and search for responses to past-sent spam mails just doesn't fit with their operating model which is take very large scale action, and reap results with minimal effort. (take as evidence the spam one sometimes gets from addresses like big.hairy.mike...@somedomain.com purporting to be from an 18-year-old Eastern European girl looking for a husband... It's obviously bollocks and they don't give a monkey's that it's obviously bollocks, because there will be others in the mountain of stolen and/or forged addresses like exotic.angel...@sexyangels.cz or something, that might actually get a reply from someone stupid enough) I suspect debian-user has just made it into their lists one way or another and they probably haven't even noticed. So a bunch of hassle for a lot of people, and the perpetrators didn't even specifically intend to do it. (they also are supremely indifferent to the trouble they have caused) Mark
