Obtaining Beer Using Thunderbird Signatures

Amusing bug report of the week:

Thunderbird by default is setup to grey out signatures. I have discovered it is possible to subliminally program people by modifying my signature. Because by default they are greyed out people don’t pay much attention to them. I have admittedly only had limited success so far – free beer – however I feel a sustained campaign with the right subject could have excellent results.

subliminal.png

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Find someone who you communicate with frequently.
2. Rewrite bits of your signature to implant suggestions. (Important to keep it roughly the same shape).
3.

Actual Results:
Target bought me beer.

Expected Results:
I would reconsider greying out signatures by default.

8 thoughts on “Obtaining Beer Using Thunderbird Signatures

  1. I am a little disappointed that it was marked ‘Invalid.’ Seems pretty valid to me. Maybe ‘wontfix’ but when free beer is on the line…

  2. Whoa… how did his signature manipulate a discount store into buying him beer? ;o)

    (Target is one of the three major discount store chains in the United States, not as big as Wal-Mart but bigger than K-mart.)

  3. OT, but since Asa keeps deleting me from his blog, this is just to publicize.

    I asked a very simple question in an Ask Asa: Who was responsible for the testing/QA failure that led to a security regression in 1.0.4, how will they be censured, and what is being done to prevent a similar recurrence.

    He didn’t answer and has deleted every comment I post, in which I’ve said the same thing. I think it’s a fair question. Not answering is pretty crappy, but censoring just because he spends too much time being ‘visible’ and not enough time actually doing QA is truly pathetic.

    Asa isn’t the funloving guy his blog projects, he can be a complete idiot too. Spread the word.

  4. Dear ‘quality’, if you’re having trouble finding free publicity for your message on someone else’s personal publishing platform, instead of repeat-posting your message on that someone else’s personal publishing platform, or bulk-posting your message across a selection of yet other people’s personal publishing platforms, try posting it on your own.

    What’s that? No one reads it? That’s probably because nobody is that interested in reading flamey requests for public flogging of individuals, thinly veiled as “questions”, from someone that brings nothing to the table, or at least provides no identifying information to see if he does.

    Maybe try your hand at something remotely productive, instead.

  5. ouch :)

    maybe this was intentionally put in thunderbird so the developers could get free beer while working? its a good idea :)

  6. Any screen shots? It would be nice to promulgate this UI issue … but I’m having trouble visualising the full story.

  7. Oh! That’s what you are talking about………

    Sorry, I thought you were talking about *digital* signatures … and was trying to work out how you’d managed to trick your recipient into accepting a *signed contract* to provide you with beer.

    OK. Thanks for the explanation :)