Like, it can’t be a real person, right? Has anyone tried following the links? I’m curious how they’re scamming people. It just seems like anyone getting the same message 5 times won’t fall for being catfished, so I don’t understand what their strategy is.

  • @cynar
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    29 hours ago

    No evidence that we have. The spammers obviously think it’s worth doing however, and they are the ones that would have the statistics.

    • @[email protected]
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      18 hours ago

      All the evidence we do have demonstrates that the typos evade Bayesian filters and improve deliverability. This is demonstrably true.

      When you hear hoof beats think horses not zebras.

      • @cynar
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        18 hours ago

        Does it however? I’m not up to speed on modern anti spam, but a huge number of spelling mistakes screams spam to me. I would be extremely surprised if it wasn’t the case. The best way to deliver spam is to make it indistinguishable from legit messages.

        Also, the existence of spear fishing implies it’s a choice.

        • @[email protected]
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          07 hours ago

          a huge number of spelling mistakes screams spam to me

          Do you mean to say, you’ve learned to associate spelling errors with spam because most of the spam you see… the spam that gets past your spam filters… has a lot of spelling errors?

          The best way to deliver spam is to make it indistinguishable from legit messages.

          That’s just not true. The best way to deliver spam is to send it from a reputable address, and to avoid looking like spam.

          Bayesian filters need to be trained by a user identifying email as spam. From those emails it learns which words frequently appear in spam emails. Including spelling errors means more unique words rather than words that look like spam.

          • @cynar
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            16 hours ago

            More than I see very few of them anymore. I see more of them when I look in the junk mail, but even hotmail has gotten good a filtering out all the crap.