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Just wondering if someone could comment on this as I am baffled. Why
does a "spammer" (I presume a prospective spammer), send an e:mail with
the contents totally garbled and/or the content an obvious copy and paste of
some on-line novel. Is this some sort of attempt to see if I open the file?
Is it some attempt to find out if it's a real E:mail adress? I also get the
odd E:mail with the content suggesting lots of different topics. Please
educate me on this so I know how to deal with this... Thank you Jim

Jimi wrote:
> Just wondering if someone could comment on this as I am baffled. Why
> does a "spammer" (I presume a prospective spammer), send an e:mail with
> the contents totally garbled and/or the content an obvious copy and paste of
> some on-line novel. Is this some sort of attempt to see if I open the file?
> Is it some attempt to find out if it's a real E:mail adress? I also get the
> odd E:mail with the content suggesting lots of different topics. Please
> educate me on this so I know how to deal with this... Thank you Jim
>
>

I have to wonder the same thing when I get spam messages like that too.
I sometimes also get spam that has meaningful stuff in part of the
message, and the rest of it's garbled. Probably to throw off spam
filters, I'm guessing (but don't take that as an expert opinion!). And
the entirely garbled messages...yeah, I'd have to guess them to be
tests. As far as spammers are concerned, if a message doesn't bounce, no
news is good news.

On Sun, 29 Oct 2006 23:15:58 -0600, "Jimi" <>
wrote:

> Just wondering if someone could comment on this as I am baffled. Why
>does a "spammer" (I presume a prospective spammer), send an e:mail with
>the contents totally garbled and/or the content an obvious copy and paste of
>some on-line novel. Is this some sort of attempt to see if I open the file?
>Is it some attempt to find out if it's a real E:mail adress? I also get the
>odd E:mail with the content suggesting lots of different topics. Please
>educate me on this so I know how to deal with this... Thank you Jim

It's called Bayes Poison. It's to throw off the anti-spam filters.

Basically, if I sent you a one line e-mail that said "Check out this
site for great prices on Viagra", it would be detected as spam. But if
I add a hundred words, it's less likely to get cought.

Jimi wrote:

> Just wondering if someone could comment on this as I am baffled.
> Why
> does a "spammer" (I presume a prospective spammer), send an e:mail with
> the contents totally garbled and/or the content an obvious copy and paste
> of some on-line novel. Is this some sort of attempt to see if I open the
> file? Is it some attempt to find out if it's a real E:mail adress? I also
> get the odd E:mail with the content suggesting lots of different topics.

Most of the time you will find the real spam inside a picture then, and -
when you have html on for e-mails - that picture may also be linked to a
webpage, or it may contain a webbug.
Now, the gibberish text around is just to fool the spamfilters.
SPAM rarely contains a valid return address, that one would expose the
spammer to prosecution.
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On Mon, 30 Oct 2006 21:00:22 +0100, Walter Mautner Has Frothed:

> The spammer could just guess
> which of the hundred addresses are valid.

So you think when a spammer sends out 5 million+ emails a day, he's going
to "guess" about valid addresses?

Were you dropped on your head at birth, Walter?


--
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COOSN-266-06-25794