The Growing Field Guide To Spam Techniques

Aneusomy writes "From Activestate: 'Compiled by Dr. John Graham-Cumming, a leading anti-spam researcher and member of the ActiveState Anti-Spam Task Force, the ActiveState Field Guide to Spam is a selection of the tricks spammers use to hide their messages from filters, providing examples taken from real-world spam messages.' The hope is that Activestate and others can contribute to continually expand this guide, so that anti-spam filters improve."

Comments

Dirty Little Secret

[Anonymous Coward]

The dirty little secret about spamming that you never read on Slashdot is that spammers use Linux systems to generate the spam and Linux mail relays to send it.

Linux and Linus Torvalds are more responsible and liable for spam than any other single entity. Personally I use IIS 6.0 which is secured against any external threat.

Re:Dirty Little Secret

[JamesO]

You're a friend of someone who used to be a spammer?

That's what I call a dirty little secret...

The ultimate spam filter defeater.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've often had spam get past every one of my filters, simply by being an innocuous subject (something like "Hi there, how's it going") and then a message body completely empty of any content.

I thought that was a pretty impressive attempt by those nifty spammers. Cut out all the bits of spam I ignore (such as offering me crap, giving me html email, popups etc) but keeping the bits I really hate (getting pissed off at receiving spam at all)

Well done kids, hope you keep it up!

Re: SPAM

[ftvcs]

You mean the "Search Pattern Assessment Model" method?

Re: SPAM

[wiggys]

Maybe it should stand for

"Stupid People Abusing Mail"

Re:"Tricks?"

[dillkvast]

And for crying out loud, "spam" is not an acronym so stop writing it in upper case!

Actually writing it uppercase suggests that you are crying it out loud.

run spellcheck first

[petardi]

It's just an idea. Spammers are fighting filters by including meaningless text in their messages. Piping mail through a spellcheck could eliminate most spam. And some friends too.

linch mobs

[Leahar]

i think the only reasonable solution to this problem. is to switch to a spamer detarant system we could orginse lefleting compains out side there companys perhaps write deep and understanding letters explain our dismay at there actions, maby we could wrap the said leters around bricks or other solid objects to aid in there delevery through a window of aformentioned companys. we could take our dismay to the managed of the companys and set up some kind of dialog maby but not definalty involving two jump leads a car battery and a book entitled gonad electricution for dummys to get our point accross (done with the utmost respect of course) should the spamers still resist our polite but firm requests things would have to get more serious

Re: SPAM

[Jafafa Hots]

Sexual Propaganda Aimed at Men

Re:My approach

[gowen]

because this is certainly true where I live, but what if ATTBI or Comcast happen to be the ONLY viable Broadband alternatives in your area?

Then I'll probably never get to see email from you. You haven't lost that much, I'm not a very interesting person.

Re:HTML mail is evil

[babbage]

One of my favorite internet quotes is apropos here:

Only an idiot doesn't go into his e-mail preferences and specify Plain Text instead of HTML. This is such a sane use of resources I believe it was actually mentioned in the Kyoto Accord.

-Roger Ebert

:-)

Re:insider help is the key.

[Lord_Dweomer]

"i had a friend who recently turned to the dark side and now boasts that his circle of friends include the biggest spammers in the world. "

Could you please post his name and address? You don't have to do anything to him, I'm sure Slashdot will take care of it. Its not like it would be bad...we'd just be giving him the opportunity to receive many great offers on products he may be interested in.