Re: Challenge-response mail filters considered harmful (was Re: Look at

[Richard Lyons <richard@the-place.net>]

On Wednesday 06 August 2003 21:33, Lance Simmons wrote:
[...]
> My spam box is full of plausible sounding subjects from familiar
> sounding names.

You're unlucky.  Mine is full of things like "Improve your life w 
eokglo ruu fhrcf" from "Jed Wray" <ykphdkh@ono.es>.  I have thousands 
of them - with tell-tale garbage in the Subject line and obviously 
fake from addresses.  I wonder why they do it...  

And the ones with plausible subjects are mostly of three types:
 1 - empty
     (the purpose of these is a mystery to me).
 2 - masses of nonsense html and random word lists, such as:
       "...coxcomb merchandising exaggerates bravely humidifying
        exhibits adaptation acclaims adulation talents schooler
        meditating port theme bobbing tensional creators pocket
        taxicab..." 
     (I suppose these are aimed at spam filters, but the effort 
     seems wasted, as there is usually _no_ meaningful text and
     only broken links.
 3 - empty but with an incomplete or broken base64-encoded... well
     something:  as they are broken, I don't have the first idea 
    what the sender thought they were sending.

So about 80% of my spamcan is unreadable anyway.  I wonder why they do 
it...

It is easy to get annoyed and self-righteous about spam, but really, 
it is mostly just pathetic...

-- 
richard