posted
So, I just checked my email inbox and there was a message titled "We'd".
Strange subject line, to be sure, but there were no attachments and my links/images were disabled, so I figured I'd open it and see what it said.
The text was this:
quote:perfectly, with stew as mistake... antonym wonderfully is was! restraint ordination a foreboding legalize,
lax to of hippo at divergent as preposition as fuse full house of bit an spooky the with stag quietness was e.g. as an dispense sheen
I mean, huh?
I figure this is either a random word generator of some sort, or some sort of secret spy code.
A friend of mine says I have two options. A) Delete it, or B) Send it to the FBI.
I figured option C would be to post it here, though I'm not sure why. Maybe just because of the odd factor.
Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
It's spam designed to circumvent the Bayesian Spam filters that are running in most current anti-spam applications.
The Bayesian filters look for sentence structure that is more typical of higher educational level discourse, and they reject (as spam) simple "Advertising" type language. They also perform some sort of averaging, such that it will pass certain known spam words (such as Viagra, Enlargement, etc.) if the e-mail is heavily weighted with fancier words and structure.
After all, if your college buddy wants to talk to you about mature issues, you wouldn't want his letter rejected as SPAM, would you? And until they can build these spam filters to recognize bullshit when they see it (and still avoid rejecting contribution requests from the Republican National Committee), you're probably stuck with these types of e-mail.
Posts: 1862 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Did it come with a picture? It sounds like a code that came out of the Shadow series. Do you have any friends that might be in need of serious help? Posts: 2054 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
Like Boothby says, it's text designed to bypass spam filters. Usually there's some additional content in the email that actually tries to sell you something or get you to click on a link, but many AV and anti-spam programs now disable/remove these links and any attachments.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Not from anyone I know, and I didn't have links or images enabled. The only reason I opened it was because it had no attachment, and there wouldn't be anything linkable or pictures.
So, there could have been pictures or links I just didn't see.
Still, very odd. I'm tempted to break it up into lines and try to get it published as poetry. It could start a whole new movement. Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Yeah, I constantly get stuff like that. I'm sure there was an image as the main body that tried to sell you real estate or herbal Viagra, and the stuff on the bottom is just the chaff to bypass the filters. Since you didn't see the image, you just got the chaff that is meant to be ignored by human eyes.
quote:Originally posted by ketchupqueen: I get that kind of spam all the time.
Ketchup, do you get a lot of that spam in a comcast email account by any chance? I get that all the time. Take about crazy subject lines.
Posts: 1236 | Registered: Mar 2002
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