3/13    What's the deal with this academic conference spam?  Are any of these
        real conferences, or are they scams to get email addresses and credit
        card numbers?  I get quite a few of these, and they don't seem to care
        that none of the conferences are even close to my field.
        \_ The one someone forwarded to me came from an ISP account and was
           relayed through China.  Looks like a new virus or some such.  -tom
        \_ Many academics, me included, get a phenomenal number from the
           "World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics".
           These clowns extend the deadlines repeatedly and generally send
           me something about once a month, which is why I'm such a fan of
           the terrific paper by David Mazieres and Eddie Kohler that they
           submitted to the conference:
           http://www.scs.cs.nyu.edu/~dm/remove.pdf
           \_ That's funny and clever and I appreciate the sentiment, but it
              doesn't really answer the question.  Does the WMCSCI conference
              really exist?  If not, is it just an email harvester or are they
              stealing credit card numbers also?
              \_ I think it's "legit" in that it's not a scam, but it's just
                 a really really crappy conference, and the only people there
                 will be the authors. (Lots of Euro conferences are like this -
                 it's a joint venture between the conference organizers and the
                 hotel, just to fill the hotel, and they usually invite a big
                 name [Nobel] to speak and pay him with your conference fees.
                 But the only attendees at the conference are the authors.)
                 \_ Ok, thanks.  That's idiotic, but I guess I can't call the
                    FBI over it.
                 \_ This sounds worse than a scam to me.
                 \_ Why do authors bother to attend then?
                    \_ Some academics are more desperate than others to publish
                       somewhere, anywhere. Also if you have funding to travel
                       to present, a European location ain't bad.