Why do some spams contain meaningless combinations of words?

[Devinco]

The reason spammers send out spam is in the hope of making money. So they hire a spambot network of zombie computers to send out millions of spam emails.
But then why waste the time sending out emails with unintelligible paragraphs of words that appear to be put together randomly?
They will certainly not be able to sell anything that way.
Are they sent to confuse Bayesian spam filters?
What's the point?
If this question has been answered already, please point me in the right direction.

[WSFuser]

Originally Posted by Devinco

Are they sent to confuse Bayesian spam filters?

u hit teh bull's eye!

In response to the growing problem of spam e-mail, filtering tools became available starting around 2002 which implemented a widely employed method known as the naive Bayes classifier. This method uses the probability of various words appearing in spam emails to automatically classify them as spam. For a short time, this worked fairly well to classify emails as probable spam. In response, spammers developed word salad to fool programs employing this method of classification. By adding large amounts of random text somewhere in their message, spammers hope to confuse Bayesian classifiers into classifying the message as "ham e-mail" (non-spam e-mail). Typically, this text contains random words from a dictionary.

wikipedia link

[Devinco]

Thanks WSFuser.

That makes sense.
Many of the spams do combine the word salad paragraphs with the sales pitch.

But I still don't understand something.
Some of the spam has only word salad paragraphs, no sales pitch, no link, just jibberish. If this word salad only email gets past the Bayesian filters, how do the spammers benefit? They could have sent me the combined word salad/sales pitch spam just as well.

[WSFuser]

rele i dont know how spammers benefit. without misspellings, spam wont get through. but with them, teh spam has little hope of getting customers.

the only thing i know is that spam is annoying and must be deleted whether its bogus or clear concise advertising.

[Devinco]

Only thing I could think of is that they are using the word salad only spams to somehow test if they are being delivered. Since the reply addresses are almost always false, they wouldn't know if the email bounced or not. But these spams usually have a gif attachment (probably a web bug) and another attachment named something like Part 1.2. Maybe they are tracking the delivery then if the web bug is activated, they send me the combined word salad spamvertisement.
Just a guess though.

Thanks WSFuser.

Ready.....Aim.......Delete!!!

[ErikAlbert]

Originally Posted by Devinco

Ready.....Aim.......Delete!!!

That's the final cure for every spam-email. If there was a "nuclear delete", I would use that one.

[Eldar]

Originally Posted by Devinco

Only thing I could think of is that they are using the word salad only spams to somehow test if they are being delivered.

My guess it's done to throw off ISP's spam filters and not for the one receiving the message.

[bigbuck]

Originally Posted by Devinco

Only thing I could think of is that they are using the word salad only spams to somehow test if they are being delivered. Since the reply addresses are almost always false, they wouldn't know if the email bounced or not. But these spams usually have a gif attachment (probably a web bug) and another attachment named something like Part 1.2. Maybe they are tracking the delivery then if the web bug is activated, they send me the combined word salad spamvertisement.
Just a guess though.

Thanks WSFuser.

Ready.....Aim.......Delete!!!

I find, in the few occasional spams that slip through my ISP's filter, that the email is actually an image embedded in the email. A large clickable link in fact...even though it may appear to be a 'letter from a bank' or similar. If you are viewing your emails in 'plain text' then you are actually viewing an 'alternative text' message....which is usually the gibberish that you mention. I suppose it's to confuse 'filters' and 'message rules' where specific words are excluded.

[bigbuck]

Here's one.
The 'hand pointer' didn't show up in my screenie....but it is one big clicky link.

[bigbuck]

...and here's the 'plain text' gibberish behind it.

[Longboard]

Yes
Sophisticated phishing techniques to the uncertain,
One careless click and oops!

Set your mail to Text only send and receive, is I believe, a useful security measure.
Anyone who trys to send you non-text only mails is not your friend.

[Longboard]

@BB

Heh
You part of a bot net?
I just got 2 of those swiss invest e-mails

Aren't spammers just a pain in the arse.

[bigbuck]

Yeah, I've had the same one a couple of times. Seems to slip through B'pond filters....

[Devinco]

Originally Posted by Eldar

My guess it's done to throw off ISP's spam filters and not for the one receiving the message.

Thanks Eldar.

[Devinco]

Originally Posted by bigbuck

I find, in the few occasional spams that slip through my ISP's filter, that the email is actually an image embedded in the email. A large clickable link in fact...even though it may appear to be a 'letter from a bank' or similar. If you are viewing your emails in 'plain text' then you are actually viewing an 'alternative text' message....which is usually the gibberish that you mention. I suppose it's to confuse 'filters' and 'message rules' where specific words are excluded.

Big Buck, Thanks. That's a sneaky trick they use to slip by.

[Devinco]

Originally Posted by Longboard

Yes
Sophisticated phishing techniques to the uncertain,
One careless click and oops!

Set your mail to Text only send and receive, is I believe, a useful security measure.
Anyone who trys to send you non-text only mails is not your friend.

Hi Longboard,

I've been using plain text only email for a while now and my filters have been working pretty well, but lately more spam is getting through.

[Longboard]

@Devinco

Yeah, same prob here.
I use NIS and the filters pick up the spam but that leaves me with about 5 or so spams in the "antispam" box each day.

Got much worse lately. Not sure why.
I used to get <5/wk.

Sounds like BB uses the web based mail.
I hardly ever check my web address: God knows whats in there.
At least if its full everything gets bounced I suppose.

It makes me laugh the way any kind of paperwork now asks for e-mail addy.
Whenever I refuse to supply same or other , to my mind, invasive of privacy details, I always get the strangest looks.

MOST PEOPLE STILL DONT REALISE WHAT THEY ARE GIVING OUT.

I,m sure most users here are very aware of their privacy, but I suspect many people just give out all their details.

Just have a look at what details even low level commercial transactions are requiring: the other day I joined up with a new video shop; they wanted:
Passport
Drivers License
e-mail
home phone
credit card

and planned to put all this on their database!!!

I was gobsmacked that they thought they could take all that.

It seems all databases are suspect or perhaps even worse for sale.

One of our national dailies has just run a little piece on privacy and imminent loss of same.
http://smh.com.au/news/technology/ey...126035051.html

Somewhere somehow there has to be a line in the sand.

Regards.

[bigbuck]

Originally Posted by LB

Sounds like BB uses the web based mail.
I hardly ever check my web address: God knows whats in there.
At least if its full everything gets bounced I suppose.

Actually that one was from my main POP3. My ISP is suposed to filter out the spam though. Also use Gmail for disposables...

[Longboard]

@BB
OK.
Yeah, me too; straight out POP3 address with Littlepuddle.
I have carry over addy from dial up days, so also have web/server address which I have never used.

I,m not sure I even knew Bigpond filtered my mail?

Is there a specific site for Bigpond to alert them of spam?

regards.

[bigbuck]

Log into their webmail and find 'contact us'??