Hey! Look down here. This is spam.

[romanof]

In today's environment I have stopped worrying about subtle hacks to either Macos or Linux. My hard and fast rule is to (almost) never respond to either emails or texts. With a very tight circle of friends, I will reply to texts but only after examining their actual address. And that only for casual talk-talk. Of course, if one of them were to text, "Install this neat app and tell me how you like it," then the pre-reply examination would get a whole lot deeper. And probably followed by a phone call to tell them their gear had been hacked.

But, examination of incoming garbage is sometimes interesting in itself. Of course, AI allows the advoidance of bad English and mispellings so that key is long gone. But, I have noticed in many well constructed spam instances, both email and text, that there will be at the very bottom of the page a long paragraph of nonsense. Ramblings about zebras are faster than giraffes, walking in the mountains will not find blueberries, if the sea is green, then France is in Australia, etc.

My wonder is, why destroy all legitimacy of the spam after spending time and effort to make it accepted by including something not only worthless, but a hard indication of the missive being malignant?

Just my musing while taking a rest from trying to figure out why my Ruby code is self destructing.

 

[maflynn]

My wonder is, why destroy all legitimacy of the spam after spending time and effort to make it accepted by including something not only worthless, but a hard indication of the missive being malignant?

I'm not sure I'm getting your point

 

[romanof]

Just as the title of post says. Spend time and effort to make a good spam text, trying to get someone to bite, then add something to the end that is ridiculous and an obvious giveaway that this is not from a real company.

 

[maflynn]

Spend time and effort to make a good spam text, trying to get someone to bite, then add something to the end that is ridiculous and an obvious giveaway that this is not from a real company.

That is actually by design. By having things poorly worded, its going to entrap the people that they want entrapped. That is the folks who are not as thoughtful, or aware, and willing to give away their personal details with a minimum amount of effort.

Having smarter people jump on that will only mean the phishers/spammers waste their time, because they'll try to get them to divulge personal details and at some point the smarter individuals will see right through that. Basically a self selection tool eliminating the people who most likely won't fall for it anyways.

 

[KaliYoni]

That is actually by design. By having things poorly worded, its going to entrap the people that they want entrapped. That is the folks who are not as thoughtful, or aware, and willing to give away their personal details with a minimum amount of effort.

Having smarter people jump on that will only mean the phishers/spammers waste their time, because they'll try to get them to divulge personal details and at some point the smarter individuals will see right through that. Basically a self selection tool eliminating the people who most likely won't fall for it anyways.

I think that meme about spammers has spread because it allows people to feel good about themselves, similar to how most people view themselves as above-average drivers. I view spam and phishing attempts as preying on emotions, including greed, fear, loneliness, and anxiety, not reasoning. So I believe random-appearing text is used to try to trick filters and algorithms, not to screen out certain people. This tactic is especially important if a criminal is trying to get around Bayesian spam filtering, a statistical technique that, essentially, relies on the presence of repeated words and phrases.

 

[romanof]

I think that meme about spammers has spread because it allows people to feel good about themselves, similar to how most people view themselves as above-average drivers. I view spam and phishing attempts as preying on emotions, including greed, fear, loneliness, and anxiety, not reasoning. So I believe random-appearing text is used to try to trick filters and algorithms, not to screen out certain people. This tactic is especially important if a criminal is trying to get around Bayesian spam filtering, a statistical technique that, essentially, relies on the presence of repeated words and phrases.

Ok, that makes sense that I hadn't thought of. It isn't working in my case as both apple and google do a good job of detecting spam. Actually, a really good job as I almost never get one in my main box and seldom a legitimate post in the spamcan. I remember a lecture about the Bayesian technique - had to look the topic up again to refresh - and it matches what you have given.

 

[romanof]

Ok, all that nonsense verbage in tiny type at the end of the spam is definitely to get past filters. And it is working, at least for gmail. I have been getting one or two every day with the huge paragraph of nonsense at the bottom of each. For now the run is disguised as offers of 20 - 40 percent off on Windows (glass), Autos, lawn mowers, phone plans, you name it, and always with a legitimate company as the letterhead. Some, but not all, don't get caught by gmail. The key indicator is to click the dropdown and look at the actual URL. Assuming that AT@T has no website called a98irf8iedo@eidklsiikdl.us then one can be fairly sure that the junk didn't come from them.

I say that google is not catching it, but it may be because of something I have turned off. Or on. I use email for almost nothing and have never bothered to learn any of the features.