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


diligentcircle

Well-Known Member
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?
 
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.
 
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...
 
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