What is SPAM? Spam is basically all unsolicited commercial email (UCE) and unsolicited bulk email (UBE) that the recipient does not ask to receive or want to receive. Spam is the Internet version of unsolicited telemarketing phone calls. They are trying to sell something, up their website hits or take your money.

Spammers harvest email addresses by scanning the internet and creating lists for spamming.

Most of us get hundreds of spam messages in our inboxes, and with the tricks that spammers are using to undermined anti-spam filtering software, it is hard to stop. Here are just some of the tricks that spammers will use:

WATCH THOSE LINKS …

Link to Search Engine, instead of Spammers Web site

What it does: Instead of including the URL for a spammer’s web site in the spam message, a spammer will provide a link to a specific search engine query that will return the spammer’s site at the top of the results.

Phishing

Creating a replica of a legitimate web page to hook users and trick them into submitting personal or financial information or passwords.

What it does: Scammers who are phishing trick users into visiting an imitation of a legitimate web page by disguising the true destination of a URL in their messages. They do this by embedding an image that looks like plain text. The image displays the URL of the site that they are imitating. However, when the image is clicked, the user is taken to the scammer’s imitated site.

Redirecting to a different URL

What it does: Instead of just putting, for example, ‘mycheapdrugsite.biz/c3/index.html’ in a spam message, spammers are hiding their destination sites within freely available redirects, such as yahoo and MSN.

What you see is not what you get …

What it does: Use the onmouseover event to change a URL so that, when clicked, the user is taken to an unexpected destination.

Hiding web addresses

What it does: Uses URL encoding to hide URLs. (See also the trick called Enigma.)

Example: %-style: http://wwww.3ee3–il11li–3lill.org/ &;-style: http://www.sgc.org/

Enigma

What it does: Uses URL encoding to hide URLs.

Example: http://7763631671/obscure.htm http://0xCeBF9e37/obscure.htm http://0316.0277.0236.067/obscure.htm http://3468664375@3468664375/obscure.htm

Splitting a web address

What to do: To prevent a URL from being recognized as a URL it is split into two parts with instructions to the reader to put the two bits back together.

Example: type http://www the the following URL in your web browser address bar: .somesite.com/page1/page2/content.htm

Camouflaging Links

What it does: Like Invisible ink, but instead of using identical colours (e.g. white on white), it uses very similar colours.

Example: (The colours 1133333, 123939, and 423939 are chosen to be very similar without being the same.)

Invisible Link

What it does: Uses white text on a white background containing words designed to confuse a filter.

Bogus login

What it does: Uses URL username@host syntax to disguise a URL.

REARRANGING WORDS …

Microdot

What it does: Breaks up a spammy word by inserting a single letter in the middle.

Example:

No cred K it? The looks like No credKit?

Nonsense

What it does: Large nonsense words are designed to subvert CRC-based spam identification.

Example:

crecrephaswukutugucrovazichonuprixisluwephimajoq

No Whitespaces

What it does: Since many languages separate words with spaces, and since many spam filters do the same, this spammer decided that replacing spaces with something else was a good idea.

Example:

DidAyouFknowNyouMcanBgetVprescriptionVmedications prescribedTonlineTwith NORPRIORRPRESCRIPTIONRREQUIRED! WeZhaveztheXlargestLselectionLofNprescriptionsNavailableZonline!

LowestzPrices — NextzDayxDelivery

Random Sized Letters

What it does: Uses very small (size 1) font to hide bogus text. (See also The black hole.)

Black Hole

What it does: Uses font size 0 to break up words with zero width spaces.

Foreign Characters

What it does: Replaces letters with numbers or uses nonsense accents.

Example: V1DE0 T4PE M0RTG4GE Fántástìç — eárn mõnéy thrôugh unçõlleçted judgments

Spaces

What it does: Inserts spaces between letters to make words unrecognisable.

Examples from the wild: M O R T G A G E F*R*E*E V’I’A’G’R’A O*N*L*I*N*E

Splitting Words

What it does: Uses a table to send words through as individual letters that are arranged top to bottom, but read from left to right.

USING HTML ..

Style Tags

What it does: Enclose text within