Help me understand something about spam....

[SnowGoose]

Frequently, but not often, there is a weird string of words at the end of a spam message. Here's an example from a recent email:

mythology soulful binaural carbide canine groggy ketone confirm choir neuropsychiatric meetinghouse psychobiology franchise collateral trivium bootstrapped chicago elbow corral amp sideboard mole influx copious aluminate screen associat

What is this all about? I have to assume that it has something to do with automated searching algorithms - but it's got this weird "free association" / I Ching-y / Ouija board kind of vibe.

Can anyone enlighten me?

[guitar man]

1. It's there

to trick spam filters I think.

[On the Road]

2. I Believe It Has to do With Avoiding Spam Filters

Many ISPs and email systems look for mass mailings that are virtually identical and either prevent them from being delivered or stick them in a Bulk Mail folder.

By adding random words at the end of an email, they make each spam unique and thus avoid the filters.

[shoelace414]

5. but there's Baysen filtering

which adds more "points" when there are certain words that always are spam.. but it also removes "points" when they are were that appear in messages that aren't spam.

well.. that's not really how it works.. it's more complex that that, and what they doesn't help because it's more complex than that, but they don't know any better so they try anything.

[On the Road]

7. You Obviously Know More About it Than I Do

Maybe it's a relic from earlier times when it actually worked. However, I would bet the spammers are very practical, and get a higher percentage delivered with the nonsense words. Not everyone is on the cutting edge.

[shoelace414]

8. How would they know if it worked or not?

each mail server has it's own baysen database.

however, if they think it might work.. they do it.

[On the Road]

10. They May Not Know if The Spam is Waylaid

but they can measure the response rate.

I've also heard that Return Receipt is often used, so that if you even open an email, the provided gets an indication that's it's a live account.

[LynzM]

I think it has to do with...

Getting filters to not see it as SPAM, that is, a spam message shouldn't theoretically contain those words, so... yeah. I have a friend who was getting chunks out of a book at the end of her spams for a while. She got enough to figure out what book, too!

[LynzM]

3. I think it has to do with...

Getting filters to not see it as SPAM, that is, a spam message shouldn't theoretically contain those words, so... yeah. I have a friend who was getting chunks out of a book at the end of her spams for a while. She got enough to figure out what book, too!

[jswordy]

4. Yep, the do stuff like s*ex to trick filters, too

But it is getting harder and harder to trick them. We have an excellent one at work.

[TlalocW]

6. I think it's a method to defeat some spam filters

If you put in enough words not related to each other then the filter will let it through even if at the beginning it wants to talk to you about your m0rt.gag3.

Whenever I see one like that I'm reminded of this guy I knew in college. Complete genius in math, physics, computers, etc. Before browsers really took off, he was goofing around on the internet, and he kept finding this area that he guessed was a military/government hub. He would send out pings to it to see what it was, but they didn't tell him anything. So he wrote a quick program to randomly combine security-sensitve words and email them to himself, but the emails first passed through that hub. So every hour, he would send out something like, "Saddam ak-47 Noriega Bush tanks nuclear." Those messages would set off bells and whistles from the "scrubbers" that looked for words like that. After a day, he got an email message saying, "Mr. So-and-so, what you're doing is not technically illegal, but it is bothering the hell out of us. Please stop what you're doing and send us your program, or we will recommend you for an IRS audit."

He stopped - not for fear of an audit, but because he found out that they were a government hub of some sort, and that's all he wanted to know.

TlalocW

[SnowGoose]

9. thank you all.