[lug] Spam question

[Ken MacFerrin]

karl horlen wrote:
> This might be a very simple and dumb question but i'll
> ask it anyway.
> 
> Why do spammers send those rediculous emails with
> gibberish in them?
> 
> Obviously they do it to get past the various spam
> filters because it "looks" like real mail to the
> filter.  But other than the thrill (and i hardly
> consider it a thrill) of achieving that rather mundane
> feat that some psychos get from the experience, is
> there any good reason why they do it?  I mean i can
> think of about a million other things i'd rather do
> then get my rocks off by seeing if i can defeat a spam
> filter with gibberish.. it just makes no sense to me
> why someone would waste their time doing it.
> 
> The only thing i can think of is that they are fishing
> to see if an address is valid or not so that later
> they can send a "real spam" message hoping that
> someone will bite.  
> 
> But i'm not exactly sure how that would validate an
> email address.  No bounce back?  Do automated scripts
> check at the SMTP level for confirms or something?
> 
> Anyway, just wondering if there's something deeper to
> this mass of turd mail i get that isn't even legible.
> 

Most of the time I see this there is actually an image ad of some type
embedded into the email that hypes the product they're pushing; but
depending on your filtering or email client setting you might not be
seeing that part.  The hope for the spammer is that the gibberish will
get them through the filters so you'll see the image ad.
-Ken