SPAM · Feb 01, 12:25 PM

Hi everyone,

Regular readers (Hi Mom!) will know that SPAM is not a new topic for me. I often am asked why we can’t do a better job blocking spam and as luck would have it, the last time I was asked I had just received this email:

From: Paige Godwin

Subject: We:lc,om.e t-o Be;st E;nt-er;ta:in;me:nt

Body: ON.LY BE-ST SI-TE http://sendursms.com/topsite.html

Obviously spam..I think most of us would not even bother opening this email. So why didn’t our spam filter catch it? I ran it through this spam scoring website to get more information (powered by SpamAssassin)

This email scored a 0 which means, according to the Spam filter, it contains nothing which would trigger most spam filters to reject it. As I have said before, spam is big money. These “companies” license the spam filtering information under a shell company/pseudonym and then modify their spam so that it scores low (or not at all) and then blast it out. I.T. departments and vendors then spend time and money updating the spam rules so that tomorrow this email will be marked as spam, nefarious spammers obtain the new rules and the dance begins again. Look again at the subject of the spam above, the variety of punctuation, spacing and mis-spelling and you will have an idea of all the variables at the disposal of spammers to fool spam filters.

Spam filters are good at catching the dumb spammers but as long as smart spammers can access the logic in most commercial spam filters (on the internet or by simply buying the product updates for a proprietary system) this cycle dooms us to a career of always chasing the smart ones.

— Sean Heuchert

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