Who is Hipolito M. Wiseman?

February 3, 2011 8:46 AM

Who is Hipolito M. Wiseman, and why is he leaving all those spam comments?

As I'm deleting spam comments off my blog*, I tend to notice a distinctive set of supposed names of commenters over and over: Hipolito M. Wiseman, Tyson F. Gautreaux, and Carroll B. Merriman. The names stick out for their odd distinctiveness, and they are repeated far more often than any others.

The first of these has nearly 3 million results on Google, and I feel like I've been seeing these particular names for a very long time, so I presume they are the hallmark of a particular spam-generating program. Does anyone happen to know which one? Am I remembering correctly that these names cropped up in email spam as well? Can any light be shed on the secret career of Hipolito and his pals?

*thankfully, Akismet does a very good job of segregating them, so that's not my question.

posted by Horace Rumpole to computers & internet (3 answers total)

Probably it's the result of a random name generator which is using a less-than-random random number generator, so that the same combinations come up disproportionately often.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:01 AM on February 3, 2011

I compiled a list of some of my favorite random spam names when there was a spate of them that weren't just "Mindy" or "Dan" or whoever pretending to be my friends. I can't find it now, but they all sounded like yours: aristocratic-sounding first name plus initial plus upper-crust-sounding last name.

I'd be interested to know whether there are creative spammers out there who have given Hipolito a career, though.
posted by vickyverky at 11:09 AM on February 3, 2011

Yeah, random name generator, if you get multiple ones, its probably coming from the same spam server/botnet/whatver that's taken a liking to your email address. I found this jokey spam name generator that comes up with similiar names. I do get the feeling that these names are seeded with some weird stuff, like sports rosters, obituaries, slave ship manifests, Chuck Palanhiuk books.
posted by yeahyeahyeahwhoo at 11:26 AM on February 3, 2011