Obvious scam but what
January 16, 2024 10:06 AM Subscribe
Every week or so, I receive spam email with this text or a construction very close to this: "...I journey between the worlds of ancient scripts and the resonances of quiet. By sunrise, I‘m a shrink focusing on non-verbal cues; by twilight, I shape clay or lose myself in the pipe‘s melodies. Do you have faith in connections above words? What grounds you in times of introspection?..." It's clearly a scam of some kind. But what?
Here's another one:
Hello [name], I venture between the realms of archaic scripts and the reverberations of calm. By sunrise, I‘m a counselor highlighting non-verbal cues; by evening, I mold clay or immerse myself in the pipe‘s melodies. Do you trust in connections outside of words? What anchors you in times of contemplation?
It's obviously generated by a crappy script with access to a thesaurus. (Which makes googling exact wording difficult.) The name and email address are random.
Just asking out of curiosity. What's the game here? If I reply (and no I am NOT), how many Bitcoins will I be asked for?
Here's another one:
Hello [name], I venture between the realms of archaic scripts and the reverberations of calm. By sunrise, I‘m a counselor highlighting non-verbal cues; by evening, I mold clay or immerse myself in the pipe‘s melodies. Do you trust in connections outside of words? What anchors you in times of contemplation?
It's obviously generated by a crappy script with access to a thesaurus. (Which makes googling exact wording difficult.) The name and email address are random.
Just asking out of curiosity. What's the game here? If I reply (and no I am NOT), how many Bitcoins will I be asked for?
I've just gone through an old scroll of my email, and I had forgotten but I was also soliciting friends to forward me their flowery spam as well. This was all ca. March-August 2008, if you're curious. Anyway, now having read through some ancient spam, it looks like tucked inside the translated text of about 1/4 to 1/3 of these there was some reference made to making my penis larger, but none of them had any links or indication of where I could go or what I could buy in order to accomplish this. And again, the majority was just the strange text, with no thoughts shared about my woefully small dick at all :(
posted by phunniemee at 11:00 AM on January 16 [1 favorite]
posted by phunniemee at 11:00 AM on January 16 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Just asking out of curiosity. What's the game here?
They're trying to add a lot of real-sounding text so that automated analysis doesn't as easily recognize it as spam. Somewhere buried in that email is the spam content, they probably have something misconfigured because usually the flowery part is way at the end, or buried in a hidden table, or text color set to white, etc. Or, possibly they're trying to find email addresses that don't immediately reject their flowery prose, which means that they can start sending you spam with impunity.
posted by AzraelBrown at 11:03 AM on January 16 [4 favorites]
They're trying to add a lot of real-sounding text so that automated analysis doesn't as easily recognize it as spam. Somewhere buried in that email is the spam content, they probably have something misconfigured because usually the flowery part is way at the end, or buried in a hidden table, or text color set to white, etc. Or, possibly they're trying to find email addresses that don't immediately reject their flowery prose, which means that they can start sending you spam with impunity.
posted by AzraelBrown at 11:03 AM on January 16 [4 favorites]
Best answer: The text is trying to get past your Bayesian spam filters. Those words don't generally appear in spam.
posted by kschang at 11:39 AM on January 16 [4 favorites]
posted by kschang at 11:39 AM on January 16 [4 favorites]
Response by poster: > The text is trying to get past your Bayesian spam filters. Those words don't generally appear in spam.
That makes sense. And it worked, for the first one I received. Are they expecting a reply, though?
posted by rpophessagr at 11:57 AM on January 16 [1 favorite]
That makes sense. And it worked, for the first one I received. Are they expecting a reply, though?
posted by rpophessagr at 11:57 AM on January 16 [1 favorite]
For a while, the Metafilter inbox was absolutely plagued by testimonials for some magician or other who was reputed to improve people's love lives. Turns out I actually have an example in my archives and yeah, there was nothing to click there, just an email address, so I guess they were looking for actual replies.
posted by restless_nomad at 12:03 PM on January 16 [4 favorites]
posted by restless_nomad at 12:03 PM on January 16 [4 favorites]
Most likely they’re cleaning up old email lists by looking for bounces. Recognized spam would be eaten with no response but non-spam headed for a non-existent/disabled email address will get a bounce message.
“Clean” mailing lists can be sold for a good price.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:58 PM on January 16 [3 favorites]
“Clean” mailing lists can be sold for a good price.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:58 PM on January 16 [3 favorites]
I don’t know if they work, but it’s pretty easy to create a fake bounce message for these guys.
posted by Melismata at 1:32 PM on January 16
posted by Melismata at 1:32 PM on January 16
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Anyway, back in those days I did get a little too interested, and after some research figured out that the source of the text generally started in newspapers or magazines out of India that had been run through a translator a few times.
I did engage with the spam occasionally hoping to generate more content for my Tumblr, and I don't recall that I ever received anything other than more arcane copypasta. Maybe it was some kind of mass mail just to find active email addresses to use for other, more specific spam/scams. I've never really known.
posted by phunniemee at 10:22 AM on January 16 [5 favorites]