In Getting Through Filters, Spammers Forget The Real Goal

from the who's-gonna-read-that-crap? dept

Spammers spend an awful lot of time trying to figure out tricks for getting their messages through spam filters, and one popular technique is to add all sorts of junk between letters within words, so simple word-based filters won't stop the spam. However, as this article points out, there's one fatal flaw in that plan: once it gets past the spam filters why would any human open it up? At least that's the theory of the person who wrote the article, but there are at least two answers to that question. First, the spammers are less concerned about conversion rates than how many messages they get out there (they often charge on the size of their list and not the conversion rates). That may be short-sighted long term (if there's low conversion rates, the companies that hire them won't do so again), but spammers aren't known for being the most long-term strategic thinkers. Second, there really are enough gullible people out there who don't think anything is odd about opening, reading and responding to an email with the subject: "C;ome v;isit o,ur do-ctors v^aek?" Besides, in sorting through my own spam pile, this tactic is a pretty old one, and it appears more spammers these days are doing everything possible to make their spam look like normal mail. So, clearly, some are still doing their best to get people to open the messages.