Spammers use 'poetry' to get past filters

Chris Tompkins — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:32:48 -0700

The The Guardian Books blog in the UK is reporting on a new tactic spammers are using to get around e-mail filters: Poetry. The spammers generate “word-salads” or meaningless blocks of text by arranging random phrases taken from Project Guttenberg. The result is an odd form of poetic nonsense, which initially reads like human writing.

I recently received one of these spam poems, and my literary curiosity lead me to google the resulting phrases to see if any author had actually wrote them. No results. The poetic fragments created an odd read, which carried the form and beat of inspired poetry and even teased at wisps of meaning, but resulted in utter dribble.

Here is a rather humorous example:

Or propaganda? so I. At samba on linear. As renown He masses. He by hockey. For or film. He do accordance repressive moments. leisure as sender. I testament my shack. I partition? To it electron preparation. My important Are precinct. As dispersion. It go musician. in or trigger suspension ceremony. rotor so lance. go nationwide, socket no jumper.

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