For some reason comment spam has dropped to near zero on my site. I don't know whether to be happy or insulted. Meanwhile, on the email spam side of things, it appears that the popularity of Bayesian filtering has sent some spammers over the edge, to the point where they send out messages like this:
Online Phar?macpy
Save Over 50% On Y;omur P}rescsnriptio?n Druhvgs
With o/u|r online pharmacy you cOan saFve thousands oUf dolla|r8is
eiach Nye14ar on coXstl'y medicationjs.
WDe WsenCl>l almo!st aWXny mie3dica*tio{n yTtou w?o%ug1ld nee(d fDNrom
:Xanax )to Vi%codibqn.
No p*rescriN9ption Gis needed. B1So shop our pharmacy and staq6rt
saviQUng todaEy
This elevates spam filtering into a kind of CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) [link], you must somehow read the obfuscated message to determine that it is spam.
Posted by B Rickman at June 22, 2004 01:26 PM | TrackBack