Filter trips

What are the random words at the bottom of some marketing email

[chapmance]

Are the words at the bottom of some marketing emails designed to trip up spam filters? If not, what purpose do they address?

Chapmance

[neo_brown]

This is something I have seen a few times and I came to the conclusion that it is used to make the email slightly different from the one they just sent to someone else or perhaps from the millions they sent yesterday.

[mattglet]

Sometimes it's also to make the email include words that could be used in a regular (non-spam) email. These words hit the filter, and the filter then thinks the email is legit.

-Matt

[brizad]

I think that it "dilutes" the percentage of the spammy words/content vs. "real" words.

Our filters add various points together for the spammy things (all caps, symbols in words, bad words, etc.) and then compares these points to the non-spammy things. Then it gives a probability that the mail is spam. We set the threshold as to what is blocked.

ie: [HTML_50_60, HTML_FONTCOLOR_BLUE, HTML_FONTCOLOR_GREEN, HTML_FONTCOLOR_UNKNOWN, HTML_FONTCOLOR_UNSAFE, HTML_FONT_BIG, HTML_MESSAGE, IN_REP_TO, LINES_OF_YELLING, LINES_OF_YELLING_2, MSGID_GOOD_EXCHANGE, ORIGINAL_MESSAGE, RCVD_IN_DSBL, TT_UPPERCASE_OK, UPPERCASE_25_50]
spam probability 99.80988%
Subject: Eop V~i_c_o`din - Order Meds From Home Now"

When you have all of the nonsense words at the bottom it makes the spammy stuff seem to be a lower ratio of the total content of the page. Then it sneaks through the spam filters.

And the spam wars go on.....