From: ABlainey@aol.com
Date: Sat Jul 12 2003 - 18:54:03 MDT
In a message dated 12/07/2003 07:12:38 GMT Daylight Time, spike66@comcast.net
writes:
> On one of the lists I frequent someone mentioned the purpose for these
> "nonsensical" lines in SPAM. What is the purpose? Is it to defeat
> filters?
>
> Terry
>
>
>
> The word lists would reduce the ratio of spam-
> filter words to total words, increasing
> the chance the messages could get thru.
> A spam filter is looking for words like
> earn, penis, million dollars, bigger, viagra,
> at home, extra money, Nigeria, etc. Of
> course it would not be a good filter if
> it nuked every message with any of these
> terms. The spammers could send 10 thousand
> randomly chosen words in font too small to
> read along with their reprensible spam, and
> probably get them thru.
>
> Is this not a very real threat to the
> internet in general? If it turns out that
> spammers can defeat filters as long as they
> send a megabyte of nonsense with each sentence
> in their message, they will cheerfully do so.
> Since bandwidth is free, they could devour it
> with wild abandond.
>
> spike
>
Argh ! what a thought. Every now and then I reply to spammers with an invoice
for services rendered. That being my proof reading their garbage. So far no
one has payed, not that I am expecting them to, but it has resulted in less
spam. Coincidental ? maybe.
Perhaps their is an existing law we can use to force these idiots to pay for
the time we waste dealing with the crap they send us? The wordwide man hours
wasted on Spam must be astronomical.
Alex
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