Spammers Latest Trick? Dumb Jokes
from the ah,-spam-filters dept
Well, now you've done it. All those stupid jokes you've been sending around as friend spam has made spammers realize that to get past Bayesian spam filters, they shouldn't just paste in the text from classic pieces of literature, but instead just toss in a few lame jokes, and watch the spam fly right through filters. The article doesn't make the connection, but it seems quite likely that the reason these get through more effectively than other types of text is because so many people bombard their friends with stupid jokes as friend spam.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
Thankfully, most of the people I keep in touch with have grown up beyond the sending of especially dumb jokes, so they still get plonked.
Especially because most of the time, they can be defeated on other SpamAssassin heuristics.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Friendly spam
The links point out previous technics, like word-salad, but that hasn't been successful, so why would poetry be? Baysian filters have no concept of context.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]