[CLUE-Talk] Gibberish in spam messages

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

On Sat, 2003-03-22 at 21:27, Matt Gushee wrote:
> Just curious--lately I've been getting quite a few spam messages that 
> include "words" consisting of random characters either in their 
> subject line or in their body. For example, today I got an 
> advertisement for grey-market pharmaceuticals that included the line
> 
>   "l echsb caafkekj wchbsxqnm ouz xkse gmokmuidtitfd gprc rm"
> 
> Has anybody else noticed this trend? Given the frequency of this 
> stuff, it's got to be intentional. But why? I can't imagine it 
> improves their chances of getting a favorable response.

My guess, and it is only a guess, is that it is a tracking method for
people who report spam. If you use a service like spamcop and report
spam, I believe it sends the body of the e-mail to the abuse address --
even if it obscures the e-mail address, that may be a clue as to what
e-mail address the report came from... 

Just a guess, though. 

Zonker
-- 
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
jzb at dissociatedpress.net
Aim: zonkerjoe
http://www.dissociatedpress.net