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Story URL: http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/thespamreport/0,39025001,39125662,00.htm

Spammers have no sense of humour: Official
Choice of jokes is very 80s and very unfunny...

By Will Sturgeon

Published: Friday 05 November 2004

Spammers are disguising their unsolicited emails by including lists of jokes, either hidden in white-on-white text or pasted onto the bottom of the message to make them look like the type of message often circulated around offices and between friends.

Most popular among the spammers is the kind of blonde joke which made popular in the 1980s.

One example, sent to silicon.com by spam filtering company BlackSpider, was:

Q. Did you hear about the blonde that tried to blow up her husband's car?
A. She burned her lips on the exhaust pipe.

While email users inundated with growing levels of spam are seeing their networks put under increasing strain by unsolicited email it would appear their sides are at least safe from splitting.

Further evidence, if any were needed:

Q. What's the difference between a smart blonde and Bigfoot?
A. Maybe someday we'll find Bigfoot.

Of course spammers won't be upset to hear their material rubbished, they are merely interested in evading the simplest, Bayesian, filters which block spam based on commonly occurring keywords and textual trends.

John Cheney, CEO of BlackSpider said: "Spammers are cashing in on the jokes sent around groups of friends as a way of getting around these filters. It highlights once again that there is no silver bullet to stopping spam and that a range of techniques need to be used – and regularly updated – to stay one step ahead of the spammers."

In some respects companies have made a rod for their own backs with this issue by allowing users in the past to circulate personal and non-work related emails - such as those which include lists of jokes.

Natasha Staley, information analyst from MessageLabs, said her company's own analysis hasn't revealed a particular increase in jokes, per se, but added that "it would make sense given spammers' tendency to include blocks of non-spam-like text, from sources such as well-known novels, in order to fox the filters."

"We also see random words that we wouldn't normally expect to see in a spam email," added Staley, "such as 'wheelbarrow' and 'caramelise'."

But this technique, like many employed by spammers, only has a limited shelf-life.

Staley said: "Sophisticated filters are getting wise to this and can look at the context of a piece of prose. For example you wouldn't expect a slice of Dickens' Great Expectations to be included in a sales pitch for a Rolex."

Some of the jokes, seen by silicon.com, also don't include punch lines, such as:
Q. What is the difference between Dan Quayle, Bill Clinton and Jane Fonda?
Q. What's the difference between a blonde and a brick?
Q. How do you catch a squirrel?

Punchlines for any of those jokes should be addressed to editorial@silicon.com.