Sophos Cloud Optix![The funniest spam video you'll ever see [VIDEO]](https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2012/09/spam-thumb.jpg?w=250&h=250&crop=1)
We all want our friends and family to learn more about how better to secure their computers.
But the eternal challenge is how can we make the advice interesting and engaging for a non-techie audience, and not make the mistake of endlessly droning on using buzzwords they are unlikely to understand.
The video below about spam – made by the folks at “Glove and Boots” – manages to make what could be a tremendously dry topic, funny and informative instead.
Best of all.. it features puppets called Mario and Fafa.
The video is very funny, but it does make one mistake which is sure to upset the folks at Hormel Foods.
Spam wasn’t named after the canned precooked meat product, but instead a Monty Python sketch where characters keep singing “Spam spam spam spam spam”.
Hormel foods aren’t quite keen that their product, called SPAM® with capital letters, isn’t mixed up with the internet nuisance of unsolicited commercial email. So I doubt they would be that happy to see cans of SPAM® feature so prominently in the video.
The rest of us, of course, are just giggling. (My favourite part happens at about 02:30 when a Nigerian prince offers his fortune..)
I guess we should all be grateful that Hormel didn’t name their product “flappertanknibbles“, which was – at one point – a possibility.
If you have an idea for a security video that you would like to see us make, please leave a comment below.
No promises, but we always love to hear your ideas and suggestions about how we can spread the word of computer security in a fun, informative and engaging way.
Hat-tip: ITWorld
But the "spam" in the Monty Python sketch was, of course, a reference the canned meat product.
"Could I 'ave egg, bacon, spam and sausage without the spam?"
Don't wanna sound like a redneck BUT, Spam (the canned one) can be quite tasty…I never would have tried it but my husband loves it!
The Monty Python sketch actually IS about the meat product SPAM.
Spam was around years before the Monty python sketch. In the UK it was a cheap staple food during the war.The sketch would not have worked in the UK otherwise. It's use in all kinds of meals and recipes was very widespread when I was a child in the 1960's. In the UK it was known as 'luncheon meat' – 'Spam' was its colloquial name.
Well if we're talking Monty Python….
Which great opponent of Cartesian Dualism resists the reduction of psychological phenomena to a physical state and insists there is no point of contact betwen the extended and the unextended?
Henri Bergson?
Who’s in the picture on the wall?
It looks like someone I should know.
Looks like Terry Jones on the wall…
Yep and it's a link to the Monty Python sketch. The writer of this article missed that one I think, and many others too!
Check your facts about the name of SPAM. It came out in 1937, that Monty Python episode was in the 1970's.
Yes. But I was referring to email "spam".
If I'd meant the canned meat product I would have said SPAM®
I think Graham's point was not about the meat product specifically, but regarding Monty Python was this….
Yes! we know SPAM the meat was around before Monty Python (they couldn't have sung about something that didn't exist at that point). We also know the Python's were singing about the meat product. However from my understanding of how the term came about, e mail spam is normally the same thing bombarded out over and over and over again until it becomes annoying. Python's KEPT saying spam spam spam spam spam repeatedly and relentlessly. That's the reference, the annoyance of repetitiously keeping on bombarding people with the same thing. If Python's sung ham ham ham they'd have called it Ham e mail. It's not the actual meat product or any item they were referring too when they called it Spam e mail, but the over repetatively barrage of it. As a sketch it was funny, as e mails in your inbox go it's less jokey and not something I'd chose to buy on DVD :D.. Long live Python .. and the inventor of e mail spam is not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy.
HEHEHEHEHEHE!!! Very very good!!
Entertaining and educative 😉
This is a hilarious video but aimed at the 'wrong' audience. It's at about the level of my 8 year old and I had just about decided to forward it to her teacher to use as an IT classroom teaching aid when the comment about 'flaccid' appeared.
The other group of people who really need to see this are my elderly parents, who really shouldn't be out on the superhighway without assistance. They would not appreciate taking lessons from a puppet, nor would they understand the squeaky voices.
So, lovely video but I'm not sure they're thought it through.
It is indeed a funny video, and I will be forwarding it to all and sundry – it may even be the tipping point that starts my own long considered information security blog. There’s a lot more to spam than you can digest in a short video, and the Poll today covered an important aspect that should be common practice.
Is it too silly for my retired mother? Not at all, she can embrace puppets any day.
Would it engage my grandad? Perhaps not, but I am yet to see an information security training video that would.
Can I use it in my information security awareness program at work? Will our users take us seriously if we employ puppets to convey a serious message? We already have cartoon characters and spoofs of films, so why not.
Thanks Graham for yet another great post.
I beg to differ Helen. As someone trying to stop this 'spreadable ham' – thus SPAM, in a corporate environment I see people everyday 'clicking through' on this stuff and then being surprised they are infected.
Children of course will learn more quickly than adults but it's the adults that need the training.
I would think Hormel's lawyers will be on the case already. ..
Showing a can of SPAM one or two times maybe, but so many times in the video? Whether one likes the canned meat or not, to associate it so closely with the menace of spam emails is pretty poor. Perhaps the video wasn't meant to go outside the organisation?
I think the obvious next video has to be identity theft, phishing etc.
It's not clear whether "Glove and Boots" intended comments like "It's no good…nobody wants it…" to apply to spam (unwanted messages) or SPAM® (the product). At first, I took it to mean that they were slamming the product, but in rewatching the video I suppose they might have intended it to apply to spam. Nevertheless, that ambiguity might land them in hot water.
It's too bad they had to make this well-intentioned video at the expense of the folks who make SPAM®, which obviously is a product that is favored by enough people to keep it on the market. I don't happen to be one of them, but neither do I think it's necessary to heap such implied abuse on the product.
Can’t see the SPAM(R) folk being too happy with that one, mildy amusing as it is. A misinformed video about misinformation. LOL.
This vid goes viral; you really think the makers of SPAM® are going to be concerned? It should be obvious to anyone that the premise of the video is about electronic spam (and yes, chain letters and such) and not a tin of SPiced hAM.
And, if that doesn't convince, the picture of Terry Jones on the wall clearly points to the original Monty Python sketch – don't recall them getting sued either.
As for childish in its format; yes it is and I loved it.
Jeff (52 years of age and still waiting to grow up)
Those who hate SPAM don't know how to prepare it properly. Talk to a Polynesian friend or neighbor and you'll see what I mean. Now if you've ever read the nutrition facts or about the manufacturing process, then that's a different story.
Anyone remember spam fritters at school in the 1970s? Lush! Used to love 'em! :o)
I think the makes new about monty python look at the last scene of the video (we have to push the pram a lot) and the Terry Jones pic
Are you sure it's not an internally consistent joke? From near the beginning:
Fafa (the red one): "Computer said my credit card was stolen and I don't even have a credit card. So I clicked the link and now this thing will not go away!"
Mario (the grey one): "Aw man, you got spammed."
Fafa: "Make it stop! I don't even know what is this spam!"
Mario: "Spam is the spreading of misinformation. It's telling an idea to someone who doesn't want to hear it. By tricking them."
As for association with a certain tinned cooked pork-meat product, it should only be good for their brand – "Don't think of an elephant!" as George Lakoff once wrote:
http://www.tburg.k12.ny.us/hsking/Apgov/Don%27t%2…
as while you may be thinking "Damn this spam e-mail takes ages to sift through and delete – Oh look there's a mail message from my friend, caught in my spam filter" it's probably not long before you think… Mmmmm SPAM®! SPAM® fritters. SPAM® and chips with an egg on the side. Mmmmmmm! SPAM®! See… I bet you're drooling already.
Now, not that I'd also "spread misinformation" associated with spam (or even SPAM®), but you may want to check if I've got the characters names the right way round. Their YouTube channel is here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/gloveandboots
and you only have to watch the first few seconds of their rather clever intro video to see if I've spammed you or not.
"Hormel foods aren't quite keen that their product, called SPAM® with capital letters, isn't mixed up with the internet nuisance of unsolicited commercial email." That's a double negative…