Can anyone tell me why it is that many spam emails these days contain a load of garbage words at the bottom of the mail that don't seem to relate in anyway to the subject matter? This seems to be something new that has started happening with junk/spam.

A typical small example: trinket crinkle lofty glassy corp parcel squelch marsha component batwing priori yokel clonic isochronal familism epochal edwin demonic improvisation hornbeam trouble beech sudanese tick concussion arty deallocate colatitude hexafluoride denny neutron kieffer everything

See what I mean? The words are usually quite bizare if not totally unrelated. It's not the end of the world, but I do get annoyed by all this crap/junk on my screen.

gazzapee

Question: How does a computer program that does not understand natural language go about deciding if a block of text (e-mail) is SPAM? After all, the computer does not understand any of it. It is just ones and zeros to the computer.

If it sees specific words like "Viagra" it might reject the message as SPAM, but then that important e-mail from your medical coverage plan allowing coverage of your Viagra would get rejected and you not be happy about it when you found out.

Programs have to make decisions like this with simple math. One way is to assign specific words negative scores and combinations of "negative" words even more negative scores. And then add specific OK words positive values. Then look at the totals compared to the total number of words used, to decide if it is SPAM.

Adding known "positive" words and unrecognized words somewhere in the text improves the score and reduces the odds that a SPAM filter program will spot it as SPAM and think it just might be a valid e-mail message.

Thankyou Jack, that explanation makes perfect sense. It's just a pity that every time someone comes up with a system to block spam, hackers etc, someone else out there starts a system to get around it.

This 'wordy' problem only started I notice since my ISP put their own filter in place on emails. However, that may be just coincidence.

The "coincidence" is probably due to the fact that now that your e-mail is filtered, only the very tricky spam gets through.

-SN