Len Paris wrote:
>>> What I wonder about is the dumber than usual spam that I
>>> have been getting
>>> lately with gibberish messages.
>
> I get them too. I wonder what the real purpose of them is. [...]
> I'm sure there is a
> purpose there somewhere but I don't know what it could be. Perhaps they
> are just sending out stuff to see if they get a bounce message and, if
> they don't, they record it as a valid address and sell it to someone.
_Some_ of the gibberish spams have an HTML portion that includes
an <IMG> tag with something to identify the recipient or at least
the spam-batch in the URL. Opening such a message in a mail client
that interprets HTML causes an attempt to load that URL, which
generates a hit on the spammer's web logs, which identifies yours
as a valid address even if you don't reply.
I don't know whether that's what you're seeing or not. I've also
seen some that just looked like completely pointless random gibberish
to me.
Some might be the result of a coding/configuration error in the
spammer's special spamming software -- so you're getting the part
designed to sneak past Bayesian filters, but not getting the ad
that's supposed to be included.
-- Glenn
