Mysterious text

[englishstudent]

Hi,

Has anybody seen spam emails that contain text such as the
one I have included at the bottom? Does it look like the text is
machine generated?

I got the text in a spam email promoting some stock (shares).
It seems to be syntactically OK, but semantically it does not
make sense. Any idea what purpose it might serve?

Thanks
-------

"Most people believe that a satellite falls in love with a loyal tape recorder, but they need to remember how ostensibly a load bearing burglar wakes up. The inferiority complex thoroughly secretly admires the power drill. A frustrating briar patch satiates a boiled recliner. An overripe blithe spirit is muddy."

"A buzzard around another prime minister Now and then, a power drill pees on another spider. A blotched polar bear takes a coffee break, and a prime minister living with a spider brainwashes a shabby salad dressing. When you see some dust bunny defined by the photon, it means that a nation daydreams. Some cargo bay over the tape recorder knows the squid near a roller coaster. Now and then, a hockey player related to some cab driver buries a lover around a movie theater.
The shabby pig pen slyly cooks cheese grits for the apartment building over the cocker spaniel. A grain of sand defined by the asteroid trembles, because some spider about a cheese wheel knows a thoroughly resplendent tomato. Sometimes the greasy mortician prays, but a garbage can about another turkey always steals pencils from a globule! Furthermore, a minivan self-flagellates, and the hypnotic cargo bay competes with the tuba player.
A frustrating paycheck assimilates the steam engine. Some pork chop over a grand piano pees on an inferiority complex living with the garbage can. A knowingly dirt-encrusted photon falls in love with the fruit cake. An umbrella brainwashes another parking lot. Some pork chop for the mortician, some globule, and the fractured industrial complex are what made America great!"

[englishstudent]

I wanted to post this to the "General Members Discussions" forum,
but inadvertently posted it here. Sorry about that.

[MikeNewYork]

Originally Posted by englishstudent

Hi,

Has anybody seen spam emails that contain text such as the
one I have included at the bottom? Does it look like the text is
machine generated?

I got the text in a spam email promoting some stock (shares).
It seems to be syntactically OK, but semantically it does not
make sense. Any idea what purpose it might serve?

Thanks
-------

"Most people believe that a satellite falls in love with a loyal tape recorder, but they need to remember how ostensibly a load bearing burglar wakes up. The inferiority complex thoroughly secretly admires the power drill. A frustrating briar patch satiates a boiled recliner. An overripe blithe spirit is muddy."

"A buzzard around another prime minister Now and then, a power drill pees on another spider. A blotched polar bear takes a coffee break, and a prime minister living with a spider brainwashes a shabby salad dressing. When you see some dust bunny defined by the photon, it means that a nation daydreams. Some cargo bay over the tape recorder knows the squid near a roller coaster. Now and then, a hockey player related to some cab driver buries a lover around a movie theater.
The shabby pig pen slyly cooks cheese grits for the apartment building over the cocker spaniel. A grain of sand defined by the asteroid trembles, because some spider about a cheese wheel knows a thoroughly resplendent tomato. Sometimes the greasy mortician prays, but a garbage can about another turkey always steals pencils from a globule! Furthermore, a minivan self-flagellates, and the hypnotic cargo bay competes with the tuba player.
A frustrating paycheck assimilates the steam engine. Some pork chop over a grand piano pees on an inferiority complex living with the garbage can. A knowingly dirt-encrusted photon falls in love with the fruit cake. An umbrella brainwashes another parking lot. Some pork chop for the mortician, some globule, and the fractured industrial complex are what made America great!"

It looks like computer generated language to me.

[Tdol]

The idea is, I think, is to have enough words, sometimes scraped from other sites, to get past spam filters by fooling them into thinking the email's about something else.

[BobK]

I think both Tdol and Mike are on the right track. A few years ago I came across a web-site that took a message that you wanted to send secretly or discreetly, and padded it out with lots of random verbal junk. The recipient had some means of stripping out the rubbish and distilling it down to the original text again - a sort of poor man's encryption. Your text is very reminiscent of that.

b

[rewboss]

Yes, it is a common technique for fooling spam filters.

However, I should point out that it is not a good idea to open spam mails. Depending on how your e-mail program is configured, it is possible for an e-mail to send a message to a server when it is opened, thus confirming that your e-mail address is valid, active and regularly checked. This can result in your getting even more spam.

[englishstudent]

Thank you all for your replies.

rewboss, do you know if opening such email from a web-based email
program (such as hotmail or yahoo) can send a message to the
spammer? I know that clicking on the "unsubscribe" button in such
spam mails actually confirms that mine is a valid address.

[rewboss]

It depends on how good the e-mail service's spam protection is. If the e-mail is in HTML format and includes externally-linked images (even invisible ones) which are not blocked by the e-mail service, opening the mail will confirm the validity of the address.

[englishstudent]

Oh, wow! I had not thought about that. Thanks!
On yahoo mail there is an option to turn off
HTML graphics, but it seems it won't help (since you
mentioned about invisible images, which I had not thought about).

[rewboss]

It depends what "turning off HTML graphics" actually means. If it means the command "insert picture here" is not sent to the browser, it's safer. I would bet that that is what they do, because that is actually the point of turning off HTML graphics in the first place.