who writes the original text?

If you’ve ever received an email containing a paragraph like this:

                         

you’ve probably wondered where on earth it comes from. There seem to be characters, sentences, even a vague plot – but it doesn’t quite scan. The action switches, the setting seems to flick, and there are often bizarre Biblical or mythological references. So who writes it?

These paragraphs are spammers‘ attempts to get around junk filters imposed by mail providers. Spam mail is a huge problem – around 90 billion bulk messages are sent every day. Although various measures have been put into place the spammers still manage to get their messages through, and these text paragraphs are just one way.

You’ve probably seen junk email with titles like V1agra, Via’gra or Vi@graa – this is one method spammers use to get around text recognition. Junk filters are programmed to recognise common spam words like viagra and hoodia, so the crafty spam-mongers change characters so the word is unrecognisable by anti-spam filters, but readable to the human eye.

A more complex method is the one we like best here at Spam Stories. It is based on circumventing Bayesian probability – a process used by junk filters to decide whether an email is actually spam. The filter trawls the message body searching for commonly used spam words, so if a spammer can get around this  – success! Their message will find its way into your inbox.

So where do they get the text from? Most spammers use a bot to randomly generate short paragraphs, getting their material from the dissociated press (an algorithm for creating text from other text) or the digital web archive Project Gutenberg. Others feed passages from old Bibles through a program, hoping that the archaic language will fox spam filters.

The bizarre and often entertaining sender names that junk-merchants use are yet another way of thwarting anti-spam systems. Names can range from the sublime (Sypolt Tivar) to the ridiculous (Laziest T. Femur), and come from random generators.

With the amount of effort that goes into legitimising spam messages, it’s only fair that we give something back, right?

Welcome to Spam Stories!