Even fifty years later, the influence of Monty Python is felt, as older generations reminisce and newer generations are introduced to the work of this iconic group. While Monty Python’s Flying Circus ran from 1969 to 1974, and only aired 45 episodes, this was only the beginning...
- except for the previous work by Jones and Palin at the Oxford Revue...
This was only the beginning, except for the Oxford Review...
- and the previous work by Chapman, Cleese, and Idle at the Cambridge University Footlights...
This was only the beginning, except for the Oxford Review and Cambridge Footlights...
- and the Frost Report...
Sigh.
Ok, so the members did a bunch of stuff before Python, but that’s where they started working as a single group.
In any case, Python was innovative in a number of ways, such as its use of the cold open (ie, beginning the episode without traditional opening titles or announcements), it’s use of animation, and the way they used closing credits.
One thing I recall hearing in one of the various documentaries about the group was that the writing process was sometimes very challenging because some of the humour is highly dependent on the performance and visuals – in particular, the “Come Back to My Place” bit was one which (apparently) didn’t seem funny on paper, but was very successful with Cleese and Palin on camera. Would it have fallen flat with others? Possibly.
Amongst their many hilarious and wonderfully silly sketches, whereby they combine such diverse elements as luncheon meats and Vikings, is the iconic Spam sketch, in which Idle and Chapman (in drag), are lowered (by wires) into a café filled with Vikings, and hear the spam-filled menu recited by Jones (also in drag), only to be eventually drowned out by Vikings singing the “Spam” song.
Wonderfully insane. Find it. Watch it.
One of the problems encountered by the diners is that Chapman’s character (Mrs. Bun) dislikes spam, even though every item on the menu contains spam, and she eventually shrieks: “I don’t like spam!”
Frankly, I don’t like spam either. Well, the luncheon meat is not bad, but the email kind can be really annoying.
Interestingly, Hormel Foods (the makers of spam) appears to agree. They, too, liked the sketch, but disliked the use of “spam” for unwanted email.
The reason I was thinking of spam was a text I received recently. With both Federal and Provincial elections coming soon, this one caught my attention. I expect it will only be the first of many.
First off, NEVER simply respond to an unsolicited and unexpected text.
My usual first action is to click “Report Junk”, and delete the message. In this case, however, I was curious, so I searched for “Voter Research Services”, to see if such an entity existed.
I found two things of interest, and a bunch of other sites which simply matched the vague search terms.
The first was an article on a site called Insauga – Ontario Local News. I had never heard of it, but it claims to be a local, digital-only media company in southern Ontario. Digging a bit deeper, I didn’t find a record on Media Bias Fact Check, but I found that the domain is about 15 years old and none of the sites I used to check (https://www.islegitsite.com/, for example) showed any red flags to suggest that the site is anything other than what it appears – a local media site.
Not an exhaustive investigation, by any means, but enough for an initial smell-test, so I checked the article. Unsurprisingly, it was about voter survey scams in Ontario, specifically one which matched the one I received, except this was from “Eden”, rather than “Lily”. Apparently, if you respond, you are asked to provide your postal code.
Now, this may seem innocuous enough, but consider that the actors have now associated your phone number with your postal code, which gives them your neighbourhood and makes it relatively easy to find your name. That’s more than enough to cause at least a bit of mischief, even without additional information which can be found from public or already-exposed sources.
So, high confidence that this is simply a scam and should be deleted.
But wait! There was something else!
The second search result I found very interesting was a website with the name of the organization supposedly doing the survey. I found this interesting. Was this tied to the scam? Domain name was created only 4 months ago, but I could not find any other information about it – nothing good, but nothing bad either.
Assuming that I was going to see something tied to the scam, I was surprised to see that the site starts with instructions on how to report scams, confirm which telco owns the number from which the text is coming, and how to complain to CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission). It then asks if you are receiving texts from “non-existent groups about the election” and asks for information to help crowd-source information to stop future texts. This is followed by a brief survey, whose questions are entirely about the text received, followed by a CAPTCHA and a “submit” button.
So far as I can see, all of the links are correctly pointing to Canadian government sites, such as the Canadian Government’s post about spam texts.
Weird.
The only thing I could NOT find was a clear indication of who is running the site. This, to me, is a red flag, but an odd one.
My tentative hypothesis is that someone was sufficiently interested by these texts that they decided to try and gather information about their origin, presumably with the intent to use that information against the organization(s) sending the texts.
If the operator were connected to the Canadian government or law enforcement, I would expect that to be clearly noted on the site, but I found nothing. Same for most companies and individuals doing security research. If I were motivated to attempt something like this, I would start by reaching out to the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, and working with them to ensure that everything is documented and consistent with relevant regulations and laws.
I’m really torn. On the one hand, I agree that these texts are scummy (at best) and likely to be part of a phishing campaign, and I like the idea of placing a site where people might see it and avoid the whole mess. On the other, the way it’s done makes me uncomfortable. There’s also a little voice in my head saying that this could all simply be a deeper/different scam, though that might be a step further into paranoia than is warranted...
Or is it? This is the world in which we live.
Fortunately, for most people, the solution really is simple. Just delete it and mark it as junk, or forward it to SPAM (7726).
Cheers!
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