What is point of some spam???

**King Cnvt** · 23 August 2007, 18:54

Me too. Some is completely unreadable, other just says "quit", that's it.

Even the spam you can read is just so obviously complete garbage, I can't imagine even 1 in a billion people responding to it*

*apart from Americans, who appear to be as thick/gullible as pigtulip.

**NickFitz** · 23 August 2007, 18:56

It's possible they think you're dumb enough to reply thanking them for their effusive praise; this confirms that the email address is active, making it marginally more valuable when they sell it to other spammers.

Or so the theory goes...

**TheFaQQer** · 23 August 2007, 21:10

Most that I see have gibberish, but attachments / images that are the actual spam bit. Can't see how it works, but there you go.

**chicane** · 23 August 2007, 22:51

I reckon some of it is either test runs (e.g. spammers seeing if they're able to exploit an open relay) or just incompetent spammers.

**richard-af** · 24 August 2007, 08:06

Originally posted by zeitghost

Wasn't there some cunning way of embedding a reference to a 1 pixel picture to detect if you'd opened it or not?

Or was that apocryphal?

We may never know. I heard that by opening such an email, you were transported to Alpha Centauri, to work in the Dilithium Crystal mines.

**chicane** · 24 August 2007, 08:14

Originally posted by zeitghost

Wasn't there some cunning way of embedding a reference to a 1 pixel picture to detect if you'd opened it or not?

Yep - they would create a dynamic script (e.g. PHP) with a specific numeric parameter representing your e-mail address. When you open the e-mail, the script gets called with your number, and the row corresponding to your name in a database somewhere in Nigeria gets updated to the 'gullible' status.

That sort of foul business has thankfully long been relegated to the scrap heap by modern e-mail clients that ask you if you want to load the images in any given HTML email.

**gables** · 24 August 2007, 10:53

I've been getting a few now with a PDF attachement, can they run some sort of script in there if the PDF is opened which I don't - just curious.

**r0bly0ns** · 24 August 2007, 11:10

No danger (yet), just trying to bypass spam filters apparantly.

http://www.marshal.com/pages/pressit...&section=press

**gables** · 24 August 2007, 13:49

Originally posted by r0bly0ns View Post

No danger (yet), just trying to bypass spam filters apparantly.

http://www.marshal.com/pages/pressit...&section=press

Ah, that does make sense. Some of the PDFs have had very plausible titles e.g. report.pdf, invoice.pdf.

No iamfromnigeria.pdf yet

What is point of some spam???