Spam tactics

[strange_complex]

Isn't it weird how the very devices which the proponents of spam use to get past automatic filtering systems also make their emails instantly identifiable as spam to human beings?

I just got an email on the Oxgoths mailing list from a sender named 'Debian-user', with an attachment, entitled:

"[oxgoths] Smile to see the world becomes better! ;-) flake"

Of course one does expect to get email from people one doesn't know on a mailing list. The username 'Debian-user' did sound a bit spurious, but then the goth world is replete with geeky people who use all kinds of languages, programs, etc, which I have never heard of. But the real reason I didn't open it was the appearance of the random word 'flake' on the end of the header: a common spammers' trick which instantly identified it (and its attachment) as unwanted.

I don't know why they do this, incidentally: I just know from the other spam I get that they do. Maybe some filters only look at the last word of the header, so something random and innocuous at that point will throw them off the scent?

Anyway, I suppose the coveted goal of the spam-merchants is to find a way of tricking both machines and humans. Doubtless they'll find a way, eventually...

Comments

[stompyboots.livejournal.com]

for some strange reason a lot of Hugh's mail to the list gets flagged

That'd be Hugh's unconventional approach to writing, methinks. The number of texts I've received from him that only make sense when read aloud, very quickly, in a Northern accent . . .