Who else is getting the nonsense poetry emails?

Folks,

For about a month now, the latest spam that I'm getting are these
nonsensical poetry emails. They read like a computer program just
randomly picked out nouns, adjectives, and verbs from a vocab list and
strung them together. Some have dodgy looking attachments, others do
not,

I'm very careful with my non hotmail accounts so they don't turn into
cesspools of crap, but somehow these have got through. Any other
diligent emailers getting the same garbage at the moment?

Evan wrote:

> Folks,
>
> For about a month now, the latest spam that I'm getting are these
> nonsensical poetry emails. They read like a computer program just
> randomly picked out nouns, adjectives, and verbs from a vocab list and
> strung them together. Some have dodgy looking attachments, others do
> not,
>
> I'm very careful with my non hotmail accounts so they don't turn into
> cesspools of crap, but somehow these have got through. Any other
> diligent emailers getting the same garbage at the moment?

It's stuff they put in at the head of the mail to try and avoid heuristically
based auto-detection of spam.

Graham

Evan wrote:

> Folks,
>
> For about a month now, the latest spam that I'm getting are these
> nonsensical poetry emails. They read like a computer program just
> randomly picked out nouns, adjectives, and verbs from a vocab list and
> strung them together. Some have dodgy looking attachments, others do
> not,
>
> I'm very careful with my non hotmail accounts so they don't turn into
> cesspools of crap, but somehow these have got through. Any other
> diligent emailers getting the same garbage at the moment?

Mailwasher !

Graham

On 19 Dec 2006 23:50:19 -0800, "Evan" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>For about a month now, the latest spam that I'm getting are these
>nonsensical poetry emails.
>...
> . Any other
>diligent emailers getting the same garbage at the moment?

Everyone. It's been going on for some years now, ever since the
introduction of email filters that are able to analyse the _content_
of email to help decide if it is spam or not.

If the filter analyses the text of an email and finds, say, 10 spam
associated words out of a total of 100 then it can safely reject the
email. If it finds 10 words out of 10000, even though the extra text
is pure gibberish, then it may not be so sure. Couple that with a
scoring mechanism and it can result in some spam creeping through
filters - just what the spammers want.
--
Ian

The From address is valid - for the moment

On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 07:58:58 +0000, Eeyore
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

|
|
|Evan wrote:
|
|> Folks,
|>
|> For about a month now, the latest spam that I'm getting are these
|> nonsensical poetry emails. They read like a computer program just
|> randomly picked out nouns, adjectives, and verbs from a vocab list and
|> strung them together. Some have dodgy looking attachments, others do
|> not,
|>
|> I'm very careful with my non hotmail accounts so they don't turn into
|> cesspools of crap, but somehow these have got through. Any other
|> diligent emailers getting the same garbage at the moment?
|
|It's stuff they put in at the head of the mail to try and avoid heuristically
|based auto-detection of spam.

The Agent V4 spam detection system catches 99% of these.
--
Dave Fawthrop <dave hyphenologist co uk> Google Groups is IME the *worst*
method of accessing usenet. GG subscribers would be well advised get a
newsreader, say Agent, and a newsserver, say news.individual.net. These
will allow them: to see only *new* posts, a killfile, and other goodies.

Evan wrote:
> Folks,
>
> For about a month now, the latest spam that I'm getting are these
> nonsensical poetry emails. They read like a computer program just
> randomly picked out nouns, adjectives, and verbs from a vocab list and
> strung them together.

There was a time, I'd write silly programs like that, on my C64. I'm fairly
sure I got better results than the spammers... :-)

The occasional one that does get through the spam digestion system tends gets
shown as the random garbage, because Thunderbird is set to read mail only in
plain text (or 'TechnoLuddite' mode as the people around here who like nothing
better than to send only in HTML with BLINK tags and other such crass awfulness,
like to say)

Generally, the spam message is in an image of some sort, which has been mangled
beyond the ability of software to extract characters from it (the same technique
used by web pages to defeat spammers is now being used by spammers). In many
cases, the image has been mangled beyond the ability of the human eye to make
sense of it, but this is as expected. Never confuse a spammer with any form of
intelligent life.

PS. What is the plural of spammer? Thunderbird's dictionary does not have
'spammers' (and curiously, doesn't have Thunderbird either)

On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 08:22:55 +0000, Dave Fawthrop
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 07:58:58 +0000, Eeyore
><(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>|
>|
>|Evan wrote:
>|
>|> Folks,
>|>
>|> For about a month now, the latest spam that I'm getting are these
>|> nonsensical poetry emails. They read like a computer program just
>|> randomly picked out nouns, adjectives, and verbs from a vocab list and
>|> strung them together. Some have dodgy looking attachments, others do
>|> not,
>|>
>|> I'm very careful with my non hotmail accounts so they don't turn into
>|> cesspools of crap, but somehow these have got through. Any other
>|> diligent emailers getting the same garbage at the moment?
>|
>|It's stuff they put in at the head of the mail to try and avoid heuristically
>|based auto-detection of spam.
>
>The Agent V4 spam detection system catches 99% of these.

I'll have to try it. These things have succeeding in their aim of
subverting heuristic detectors to the point that I'm getting several
false positives a day now, and have had to adopt the habit of
carefully examining each spam before I delete it.

Bastards.

Evan wrote:
> Folks,
>
> For about a month now, the latest spam that I'm getting are these
> nonsensical poetry emails. They read like a computer program just
> randomly picked out nouns, adjectives, and verbs from a vocab list and
> strung them together. Some have dodgy looking attachments, others do
> not,
>
> I'm very careful with my non hotmail accounts so they don't turn into
> cesspools of crap, but somehow these have got through. Any other
> diligent emailers getting the same garbage at the moment?
>

Yes, utter rubbish! Plus what's the deal with all these crazy
american looking emails telling me about an up and coming
company I should invest in? As for the silly poetry emails I
just don't understand what they're for? It's not even as
though they're selling anything so what do they want?!

--
(\__/) Charlie Mitchell.
(='.'=) Smooth Christmas Radio NOW ONLINE!
(")_(") Tune in FREE at http://www.SmoothChristmasRadio.com

Charlie Mitchell wrote:

> Evan wrote:
> > Folks,
> >
> > For about a month now, the latest spam that I'm getting are these
> > nonsensical poetry emails. They read like a computer program just
> > randomly picked out nouns, adjectives, and verbs from a vocab list and
> > strung them together. Some have dodgy looking attachments, others do
> > not,
> >
> > I'm very careful with my non hotmail accounts so they don't turn into
> > cesspools of crap, but somehow these have got through. Any other
> > diligent emailers getting the same garbage at the moment?
> >
>
> Yes, utter rubbish! Plus what's the deal with all these crazy
> american looking emails telling me about an up and coming
> company I should invest in? As for the silly poetry emails I
> just don't understand what they're for? It's not even as
> though they're selling anything so what do they want?!

They want you to invest in some stupid stock so that the value goes up and they
can sell at a profit.

Graham

On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 09:50:58 +0000, Ken Wheatley
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

|On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 08:22:55 +0000, Dave Fawthrop
|<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
|
|>On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 07:58:58 +0000, Eeyore
|><(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
|>
|>|
|>|
|>|Evan wrote:
|>|
|>|> Folks,
|>|>
|>|> For about a month now, the latest spam that I'm getting are these
|>|> nonsensical poetry emails. They read like a computer program just
|>|> randomly picked out nouns, adjectives, and verbs from a vocab list and
|>|> strung them together. Some have dodgy looking attachments, others do
|>|> not,
|>|>
|>|> I'm very careful with my non hotmail accounts so they don't turn into
|>|> cesspools of crap, but somehow these have got through. Any other
|>|> diligent emailers getting the same garbage at the moment?
|>|
|>|It's stuff they put in at the head of the mail to try and avoid heuristically
|>|based auto-detection of spam.
|>
|>The Agent V4 spam detection system catches 99% of these.
|
|I'll have to try it. These things have succeeding in their aim of
|subverting heuristic detectors to the point that I'm getting several
|false positives a day now,

With Agent V4 you should drag and drop anything which has got to the wrong
place to where you want it to be. The Bayesian rules will learn what
*you* want.

|and have had to adopt the habit of
|carefully examining each spam before I delete it.

I can now spot the spam at a rate of about 1 per second, then totally
delete it all with shift/delete

|Bastards.

Agreed.
--
Dave Fawthrop <dave hyphenologist co uk> Google Groups is IME the *worst*
method of accessing usenet. GG subscribers would be well advised get a
newsreader, say Agent, and a newsserver, say news.individual.net. These
will allow them: to see only *new* posts, a killfile, and other goodies.