Computer Spam Question

[JohnRich 4]

Like many folks, my e-mail gets deluged with a lot spam trying to sell me drugs, stocks and various other products. Often the advertisement for the product will be followed by a bunch of gibberish words strung together in an invalid way.

For example, a recent spam e-mail ended with this:

"extralinguistic eigenstate allegro nitride riddle oklahoma squirt larceny jangle prescript muffle closure mute effluent eucre groat dexter dismal litterbug teal pal preserve slope local avery revet allspice eradicate continuant enlargeable insignificant algal complacent bp nicotinamide city hothouse eightfold heliotrope and mathewson butane intrepid directorial singsong teenage chuff comprehensible copy whoa detent shamble eardrum keller thyroid sonata husky provision bang amazon immodest tideland norma arsenide pecos priam blatant fiscal amplify romantic comparative ill doctrinaire apportion wingtip biracial hudson ambrosial evolution inject percussive finch birdseed carl exclusive trepidation burnout redemption podge strabismic camp cadent attestation pickle cheerful cranston alistair zircon backplate amperage wrought phobic flatulent lust suspension bribe buckaroo"

My question: What the heck is that gibberish all about? Why is it placed in spam e-mails?

[RevJim 0]

Somewhere in there will be at least a word (they hope) that will trigger a filter in someone email program to pull it into a different folder instead of staying in the inbox or junk mail folder.

Example:
Say I work for a company named Amazon.com

I put "amazon" on a filter to put all emails containing that into a folder for the company, instead of missing them in the junk, or whereever they end up.

In that case, that spam letter just got saved.

aka "Keywords"

It's your life, live it!
Karma
RB#684 "Corcho", ASK#60, Muff#3520, NCB#398, NHDZ#4, C-33989, DG#1

[gasson 0]

There is a method of filtering spam called Bayesian filtering. For those who are interested in how it works check out
http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html

introducing random words into emails is an attempt to evade the filters. A quick blurb about it here http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2004-01/0351.html

I get so much spam I have had to set up procmail filters on my linux server. I have found that the scripts found at http://www.spambouncer.org/ works the best for me in filtering spam. Since March 30 it has blocked 16511 spam emails.

[RevJim 0]

Yea, what greg said too!

It's your life, live it!
Karma
RB#684 "Corcho", ASK#60, Muff#3520, NCB#398, NHDZ#4, C-33989, DG#1

[JohnRich 4]

Quote

Somewhere in there will be at least a word (they hope) that will trigger a filter in someone email program to pull it into a different folder instead of staying in the inbox or junk mail folder.

Thanks for that explanation, Jim.

I use filter words in Outlook Express to send e-mail spam to my "deleted" folder automatically. For example, anything containing the word "viagra" or "refinance" is intercepted and deleted, without me seeing it.

I've noticed that the spammers get creative, by spelling words like that with special characters inserted, so as to avoid my filter. Sigh. Sometimes they insert so much junk trying to avoid filters, that the message becomes almost indecipherable.

So if I understand correctly, these keywords are something similar, in this giant cyber spam/filter war. It reminds me of the old "Mad" magazine "Spy Vs. Spy" cartoons, where each side is always upping the ante to top the other.

[bwilling 0]

Quote

There is a method of filtering spam called Bayesian filtering. For those who are interested in how it works check out
http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html

Bayesian filtering is the best defense against spam... if you're willing to do a little work to train it, Popfile rocks as a spam filter... you can find it here

http://popfile.sourceforge.net/

I had my Popfile installation trained well, and it was about 99.8% accurate, before I switched my email to IMAP. Now I'm relying on Spam Assassin on my mail sserver, and it's okay, but nowhere near as accurate as Popfile was...

"If all you ever do is all you ever did, then all you'll ever get is all you ever got."

[bch7773 0]

i can't understand why spammers do this... if people put up filters, its because they don't want spam and won't order things from it.

its like if telemarketers started calling up people on the "do not call list"... just seems like extra work for nothing.
i guess the spammers are just hoping one person out of 10000000 they send it to buys it.

MB 3528, RB 1182

[pilotdave 0]

Thats the sad part... almost everyone hates spam, but it works. People really do buy that crap. I can't imagine buying anything from one of those companies no matter how much I wanted it. They're trying to trick the spam filtering at the ISP level, not at the PC level.

Dave

[PhillyKev 0]

Quote

can't understand why spammers do this... if people put up filters, its because they don't want spam and won't order things from it.

its like if telemarketers started calling up people on the "do not call list"... just seems like extra work for nothing.
i guess the spammers are just hoping one person out of 10000000 they send it to buys it.

You answered your own question. It costs them virtually nothing to send the spam. All they need is one sucker to be profitable.

[kelpdiver 2]

Quote

I get so much spam I have had to set up procmail filters on my linux server. I have found that the scripts found at http://www.spambouncer.org/ works the best for me in filtering spam. Since March 30 it has blocked 16511 spam emails.

Lucky bastard!

I'm dropping over half a million a month these days.

It used to be a more complicated system, now it's largely a whitelist/blacklist combo.

It won't stop until Congress will stop pretending this is anything about the 1st Ammendment and treat it like junk faxing. Won't stop the offshore stuff, but at least no US company will spend $200 to spend a million messages anymore.

[happythoughts 0]

We had problems with the spam-filter of one of our contractors. It didn't like emails with a title that included the word "document".

[champu 1]

Quote

Quote

its like if telemarketers started calling up people on the "do not call list"... just seems like extra work for nothing. i guess the spammers are just hoping one person out of 10000000 they send it to buys it.

You answered your own question. It costs them virtually nothing to send the spam. All they need is one sucker to be profitable.

That's not even true anymore. Nobody even has to buy anything for the people sending the spam to make money. The advertisers are not the people making the products. The people sending the spam don't give a rats ass how pissed off you get or how uninterested you are in the messages content, they've already made their buck.

The spammer can go to any small company and guarantee "descrete advertising of products to x number of people that won't get filtered out", take the company's money, and send you their ad along with a bunch of random crap to squeeze it by your filter.

Sure, this will piss off everyone who gets the message something fierce, but then the spamhouse gets to turn around to their client and say things like, "well, it takes time for a number of new products to really work their way into common use." and "there's no other way to reach so many potential customers at such a low cost."

[tunaplanet 0]

Quote

"extralinguistic eigenstate allegro nitride riddle oklahoma squirt larceny jangle prescript muffle closure mute effluent eucre groat dexter dismal litterbug teal pal preserve slope local avery revet allspice eradicate continuant enlargeable insignificant algal complacent bp nicotinamide city hothouse eightfold heliotrope and mathewson butane intrepid directorial singsong teenage chuff comprehensible copy whoa detent shamble eardrum keller thyroid sonata husky provision bang amazon immodest tideland norma arsenide pecos priam blatant fiscal amplify romantic comparative ill doctrinaire apportion wingtip biracial hudson ambrosial evolution inject percussive finch birdseed carl exclusive trepidation burnout redemption podge strabismic camp cadent attestation pickle cheerful cranston alistair zircon backplate amperage wrought phobic flatulent lust suspension bribe buckaroo"

That almost sums up my dream woman

Forty-two