A new wave of high brow “empty spam”
Thursday, August 10th, 2006
The Wall Street Journal reports on a new type of spam 
that has been doing the rounds for the past few weeks.
This is not the “image spam” plague, but something else. Spammers are loading up inboxes with emails containing short extracts from authors like J.R.R. Tolkien, Alexander Dumas and Daniel Defoe.
Sometimes called “empty spam” because it contains no advertising pitch or offers or phishing attempts, this type is on the rise according to IronPort Systems . I can’t find an IronPort press release to confirm the figures, but the WSJ says that,
the number of empty spam messages has almost doubled to 4% of all spam email in recent weeks, according to IronPort Systems…. For a few days in June, it peaked at 40% of all spam.
Theories about the motivation behind “empty spam” messages vary. Some suggest that it is an attempt to confuse spam filters so that more malicious spam will slip through later.
Others point to a possible breakdown of communication between spam host servers and the virus-infected “zombie” computers that circulate the spam more widely. When communication breaks down, the zombies continue to send the “hashbusting” text that helps spam make it past the filters but without the “active package” which contains the advertising offer or phishing scam.
Unlike “image spam”, I haven’t seen any of this “empty spam” myself.
Tags: defoe, dumas, email, empty spam, image spam, Internet, Junk, spam, tolkien