[Gllug] What's the point of content-less Spam?

[Tethys]

John Winters writes:

>Perusing the directory where my mail filters shove all the crap today, I
>noticed that some Spam messages now seem to consist of nothing but
>random words.  I can see the objective is to overcome Bayesian filters,
>but there seems to be nothing but random words.  One can guess from the
>title that someone is trying to sell Viagra, but there's nothing in the
>body of the message to tell you more.
>
>What's the point of Spam which goes so far to overcome your Spam filters
>that it has no message content?

Most of them are HTML with web bugs (invisible 1x1 pixel images, that
refer to unique URLs). That way they can track who has received the
message. This serves two purposes. Firstly, they can validate email
addresses that are being read, and hence sell them on for a higher
price. Secondly, they can test the effectiveness of various bayesian
bypass techniques they're using, by seeing which ones get past the
most filters. They then use the most effective one for their actual
spam, selling viagra, anatomical enlargements, pictures of their
mother in assorted compromising positions, etc[1].

Tet

[1] And bizarrely, I've been getting a bunch of contruction related ones
    recently -- no, I really don't need a new JCB. Or a new concrete mixer.
    Or any amount of concrete and iron...
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