Weird spam E-mail names and subjects; anyone know why?

[diligentcircle]

I make it a habit to quickly check my spam E-mails and make sure none of them are falsely reported, then delete the rest.


Recently, I've noticed that my spam E-mails have often had some extremely strangely written subjects and sender names. The most recent example I got was a sender using the name "American ē-Ciģàȓeţteş" (note the random accented letters in the word "e-Cigarettes").


Anyone have a clue why spammers have decided that randomly replacing letters with sort of similar accented characters is helpful to them?

 

[mcobit]

Some spamfilters use a backlist of words and wordcombinations, that are often used in spammails.


They use those strange letters to prevent the spamfilters from finding those words, what doesn't always work.

 

[diligentcircle]

Ha, figures.


Seems like it would kind of defeat the purpose with your names and subjects being loaded with crap. It kind of raises a red flag that says "this is spam". But hey, whatever helps me weed out the junk...

 

[mcobit]

For the spammers its only important that you get the mail at all.

 

[Prometheus]

It used to be more fun when they used randomly-generated wacky names...