[extropy-chat] Spam

[Harvey Newstrom]

John K Clark wrote,
> It's puzzling, in most of the spam I've gotten recently they 
> don't appear to be selling anything. The subject line may say 
> something about sexual aids or low interest rates but the 
> body contains nothing but what looks like random verbiage 
> from some old encyclopedia or novel. I can understand putting 
> in a little of that to get around the filters but that's all 
> there is, on this stuff there is no way they can make any 
> money off me even if I was the most gullible man on the 
> planet because there is no product they are selling and no 
> way for me to send them money. It must take time and effort 
> to send those messages, why do they bother? I guess the new 
> point in spam is not to make money but just to send spam.

These are trolling for valid addresses.  They can collect all the bounced
messages and prune their list to active addresses.  They also are testing
various methods and channels to verify that they work before they send the
actual spam.  They also want to verify the anonymity features before putting
their actual product into them.

You will see a spate of these just before any holiday or date when people
are planning to send a lot of spam.  You will also see a bunch of these
whenever a new version of a spam engine is released, as thousands of
spammers start testing the new software.  All of these spams look similar,
because they are all being generated by the same software.

-- 
Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC
Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager,
NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC
<HarveyNewstrom.com> <Newstaff.com>