Gibberish Spam. (why?)

[Lobsang]

I've asked similar questions in other forums and probably got answers but mainly got people extolling the virtues of two e-mail addresses (or if it's a rant about popups - their popup free browser)


I don't think I've ever asked in GQ, I think I will manage to remember the answer if I ask here...

Why do I/we get e-mail that makes no sense?

Sods law - I just had a look in my deleted items folder and can't find any examples. so I will make one up. The title will be something like "lobley, you'l love this!" and then the subject will be hundreds of random characters.

or the title will be "lobley, make money the easy waysoidjoin"

nonsensical gibberish creeps into about 50% of the spam I get.

what is the logic behind this?

[RealityChuck]

It's a fairy new development -- random spam. Many spam filtering systems have trouble filtering if the message is mostly random characters.

[Lobsang]

the word 'join' was a freak accident. I did not mean to type an actual word in that gibberish. (just so you know)

[Lobsang]

I get the idea that gibberish is difficult to detect by filters. What baffles me is - what is the point? if you are sending gibberish, how does that benefit you or advertise your product in any way whatsoever?

[Severian]

Often, the subject is gibberish but the message body contains a link or advertisement. In cases where it's gibberish through and through, I've come up with a couple theories:

1. The spammer made a mistake with their bulk mailing software and is sending a useless message.

2. It's a test message to weed out invalid e-mail addresses. Perhaps there's an invisible web bug in the body, or perhaps they farm the NDRs and take those addresses out of thier list.

I can't think of any other possible reason

[Fritz The Cat]

I asked about this myself, and was told that it was bad html code, done by new people trying to get into the e-sales business but don't know how to write html. So instead of a proper page, just the bad code shows up.

[Mr2001]

One purpose (if not the purpose) of putting gibberish into spam is to make each message different. Some filters will drop identical messages that are sent to too many recipients, so the spammers insert random gibberish to make each message different.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Mr2001
One purpose (if not the purpose) of putting gibberish into spam is to make each message different. Some filters will drop identical messages that are sent to too many recipients, so the spammers insert random gibberish to make each message different.

That explains a message that contains actual text interspersed with nonsense but it doesn't address messages that contain nothing but gibberish. Out of the 50-75 spam messages my junk box gets a day, 1 or 2 are usually nothing but random characters.

[Ale]

Lobslang said:

"what is the logic behind this?"

A fair question, what´s in the mind of a spammer?, I´ll forward a proposal, let´s find a spammer and perform a series of tests to elucidate the nature of a spammers mind; live brain tests, vivisection of sexual glands and anal proving would be necessary.
In fact, I think the study should cover the whole spammer community, to be sure we have consistent results. :D

[gazpacho]

I think that the spam that is really total giberish is due to the spammer not using his spam software correctly.

[Space Vampire]

Spam that is totally gibberish may well be the result of you getting spam in a foreign language without having the proper fonts installed. I get a handful of Chinese spam almost every day.

[stockton]

I'm with Ale, let's dissect the spammer and see what makes him/her work.

[Ray Walker]

As long as said spammer can be dissected alive, I'm all for it.

[Shalmanese]

Beleive it or not, most of spam is not designed to sell viagra or penis enlargements, most of spam is designed to sell more spam. More specifically, the spammers are looking at whether your email address is active or not. Chances are, the spam is in HTML and it requests an image from a server. The server records what email addresses access that image and know who is reading their email.

[Ale]

Ray Walker said:

"As long as said spammer can be dissected alive, I'm all for it."

Definetly, I think that a 20/30% of the studies should be live dissections; in science name, you know... preferably using an old, rusty, very dented razor.

[Doomtrain]

You know, it might be that they were trying to send a virus. Some of the Klez worms I get show up as just regular text in my email reader. I guess they tried to send it as an attachment and screwed up OR my mail client is trying to show it in the message.