What is the point of this type of spam?

[Karen G]

Lately we've been getting a lot of spam that makes no sense. It will have a message like the one I got today which seems to be a few lines from a story:

"Then, just before the car got to the edge, the door banged open and out he flew onto the road! Eyes wild and blank, he lashed out at Geoffrey, striking his old friend high on the cheekbone. Then, reading the clipping again, he noticed something suggestive: Angela Ford from John Ford. Part of him understood exactly what this assessment meant: he had given up the idea of escape."

The message went on with just repetitions of the first line.

I noticed the email was addressed to two or three others with similar email addresses to ours. Often the message will seem to be a quote from a story but sometimes it's just gibberish. There is never a phony email link to click or a solicitation of some sort or something to sell.

Why would someone bother to send this stuff?

 

[AwayWeGo]

They're Looking For Good E-Mail Addresses.

Why would someone bother to send this stuff?

If the spam doesn't bounce, that means it landed in somebody's working & functioning in-box. That means it was a valid E-Mail addresss. That gives it value to folks in the business of compliling lists of good E-Mail addresses they can sell to spammers. So it goes.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

 

[Makai Guy]

It may also contain a small, nearly invisible, image that is retrieved from their server when the message is viewed, also confirming the message was received and read.

I have my Thunderbird email client configured to NOT retrieve images automatically unless the sender is already listed in my addressbook.

The text is there to make it appear, to any spam scanning programs, that this is a legitimate text message.

 

[johnmfaeth]

These messages can also contain executable code that will either be a virus, or worse, a Trojan Horse. These then capture keystoke sequences and send them "home" via the internet. Guess what, your usernames and passwords are part of the text stream sent back as you type them logging in to various places.

They execute upon being opened.

Everyone should have anti-virus, anti-spyware software installed and RUNNING on their computer.

Don't know the sender = do not open is the best rule.

Make sure you do not set Outlook to preview mode or something can be run just by previewing it.

 

[Icarus]

The nonsense text in those messages is there to get past spam filters.

-David

 

[KforKitty]

I've been getting many of these recently and they do come with an image file (gif I think) attached. I've never open the image file so don't know what it is but have opened the message as some have plausible titles that could be relevant to my work. I've tried setting my filters to exclude these but they always come from different addresses. My spyware and anti-virus has never alerted me that there is anything untoward in the message, but still they come.

Kitty