Sunday, January 04, 2004

Join the spammers in random haiku January 4, 2004 It's a thesaurus attack.  But you can get revenge on the spammers by inventing your own fake names, semi-literate subject lines, and crazy body text. For the last month, major spammers have discovered that they can fool filters by throwing words randomly selected from a thesaurus into the From, Subject, and Body of their emails.  The garbled text disguises the origin of the email, hides the taboo words deep in the subject line, and makes the message seem to carry legitimate, if confusing text, in addition to the spectacularly bad video of Paris Hilton bouncing around in the dark. From who? By accident, some of the From lines have a Dickensian tone.  The Wall Street Journal's spam team noted Convulsively F. Supplanting Tabernacle C. Interface Pigeonhole E. Eatery Mayans F. Sedulous. Note the middle initial, giving the name a spurious authenticity.  Here are some of my favorites from the last week or so: Belshazzar O. Vulgarity Pinch A. Appearing Oars D. Stubbornness Tenderfoots O. Blankets Tusk I. Deletes Avidity O. Pistillate Puffin R. Residents Chivalry E. Squashed Personified O. Corollaries Stowaways D. Highbrow Indigestion P. Stodgy Bighorn O. Noticeboard Broth J. Flash Effeminacy P. Editing Clearly, these characters are not just your ordinary Bessie and Bob, who send so many messages out. My impression is that the author is a vulgar highbrow, intellectual enough to grab words out of a thesaurus, but indifferent to the overtones, because of greed.  He clearly dislikes editors, even while cooking up little Flash animations for porn sites. Subject lines from Roget The subject lines have been designed to sound intriguing to an intellectual, while sneaking past filters that look for the two four-letter words beginning with f, and so on. One programmer screwed up when assembling these strings, hoping to grab my first name and put that right into the subject line, to make it more personal. Subject: Congratulations &firstname; Another programmer let the secret out: Subject: Random text, random money By putting together any old random word with a word from the thesaurus entry for money, he hoped to get me to open that one.  But he was incompetent, or stoned, or both. The other programmers had more luck with their algorithms. Imagine what these messages would be about, if they were real. Subject: armhole conclave lateral Subject: burial hypnosis collage Subject: craved task Subject: housing brainstems Subject: Scientific Journal News: Medical Update Subject: scuttling illiterate Perhaps these programmers are just college students who scorn illiterates like us, who are going to be impressed with news from a scientific journal.  But I begin to see the truth showing through, with the collage that puts together burial and hypnosis: maybe they are going to put us into a trance, and kill us, by pasting together words and images in this Dada "method." Body text by algorithms To fool the filters that filter out email containing only a graphic, these geniuses have started pasting together strings of words that sound sensible, at least to a utility program. One whole genre is made up of pairs and triads.  Here are some of my favorite neologisms: quicksandplacetowel carrotprophesy agaveproducibleburr chitonpelvicguillotine More common are strings of words separated by space characters. Most of these rambling discourses suggest that the writers need more monkeys in the mix.  The text is not that suggestive.  But here and there the randomizers happen on suggestive phrases: Explosion blatz breakfasted crone angeline scuba cruelty bishop barbaric bijection footbridge gusset hilarious petrel sedimentary bookcase analgesic bleed Montana disruptive hymn descant blissful avoid chief insominia copperhead fetid germinal bark creating mockup salvageable aeolian parameter eplieptic concerto faun letter hell suddenly don't having glass left sometimes step The fancier programmers borrow proper names and scientific terms, ruining the lyricism.  Others seem to rely on a word list designed for people reading English as a second language: most of the words are commonplace, and monosyllabic. Two horse think Small place home sense parts less race costs sun here work Taking advantage of all the texts posted as ebooks, a few programmers ransack whole paragraphs from books of folk sayings about first love, and ignorant men, or novels with tangled pronouns and inchoate character development. Rob had little confidence in the man's honor, but he was so eager to regain the tube that he decided to trust him. Can you top these? Don't send me the damned emails.  But if you are struck by a pungent phrase or two, excerpt those, and send me a note showing your poetic discoveries. Subject line: Poetry. Address: ThePrices@theprices.com. 6:07:44 PM    comment []