Spammers resort to all kinds of keyboard gymnastics in order to defeat spam filters. You'll see Viagra represented as \/|/\Gr/\, etc.
You'll see varios scammers trying to tell you they have a gazillion dollars they want you to help them steal and for your help you'll get 10% of the take.
Another one is a lottery scam. They tell you that you just won the grand prize in a lottery you never bought a ticket for and all you have to do is give them your social security number and bank account number and you will be an instantly rich person.
Again, they all use some sort of symbol letter combinations in hopes of bypassing the spam filters.
Today, I got one of those imaginative attempts to defeat my spam filter. It didn't, but I review message headers to see if a legit message got trapped. This one got trapped, but the subject was so on target:
World Wide Lootery agent
Finally, an inadvertantly honest spammer!
VW
Ach, bullocks! There's no such thing. Send a virus into his system and shut it down!
Posted by: canuckistani | Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 10:00
Dateline did a show on the Nigerian guys and busted them in person after meeting with them to do the money exchange - one guy just took off running down the street - was pretty funny.
Posted by: Kelly | Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 13:06
LOL!!!!
Posted by: Jenn | Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 14:16
Kelly, I watched that Dateline show too...it was great.
Posted by: BobF | Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 17:35