Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Spamtrap installation

Bill Shackelford writes: "I recently released a new installation art work called "Spamtrap", and I wanted to get your impressions of it."
Thanks for asking Bill! Here we go ...

Firstly I'm grateful for being introduced to a clever technique in avoiding spam - by attracting spam to an email address set up as a honey-pot for exactly that purpose.
"Because I know that all email sent to this email address is spam, I can adjust my spam filter to look for characteristics found in those confirmed spam messages when filtering out spam for my personal email account."

Bill's Spamtrap installation prints spam emails out as they arrive ... promptly the "printed email slides down a track into the shredder that analyzes it", letting the snippets accumulate on the floor. (I like use of the word "analyze" here)
Spamtrap
... Video


My conclusion: Even though the device does not serve drinks, it has to be considered useful: it introduces us to a technology which just might help us save more time to be indulging in mixology. On top of giving one the satisfying sight of spam messages being physically destroyed.

No comments: