How can anybody fall for this?

02/11 2003 – Some of the spam I get is just unbelievable!

I can’t help but wonder how anybody receiving a mail like the one below could think ”hey that’s great! Somebody with a netscape.com address has just written to tell me I have been approved for a home loan”? But there must be. Enough people out there clicks on the link in mails like this to make it worth while sending them, or they wouldn’t be sent.

Oops! Update: When selecting all text in this spam I noticed that this was the full text:

alopecia , baldness

Your home refinance loan is approved!

To get your approved amount go here.

Now why would someone hide two words that would only trigger even more anti spam filters in a spam about loans? There is no sign of the text when just looking at it (I had to highlight it for copying to see this):

Update 8/11 2003: I now know why those two words where appended to the message. It’s all to prevent your ISP’s server side anti-spam software (if they have it) to recognise the mail as spam. The software can’t tell since it isn’t seeing thousands of identically worded mails; they all differ by one or two words.

Anyway, here are the full headers:

From 9erf14sqwx@netscape.com Mon Feb 10 06:58:52 2003

Return-Path: 9erf14sqwx@netscape.com

Delivered-To: [edited by N!kke]

Received: from nw-smtp.wineasy.se (nw-smtp.wineasy.se [195.42.210.226])

by nw-pop4.wineasy.se (Postfix) with ESMTP id D89D3310

for [edited by N!kke]; Mon, 10 Feb 2003 06:58:02 +0100 (MET)

Received: from netscape.com (66-17-0-146.bkfd.arrival.net [66.17.0.146])

by nw-smtp.wineasy.se (Postfix) with SMTP id 5410B4002D

for [edited by N!kke]; Mon, 10 Feb 2003 07:01:19 +0100 (CET)

Message-ID: 000011a6ab30$dbe56417$77518624@yljqkdn.nbv

From: 9erf14sqwx@netscape.com

To: [edited by N!kke]

Subject: You Have Been APPROVED

Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 15:58:31 +0500

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: multipart/mixed;

boundary=”—-=_NextPart_000_00C7_37B18B7E.D5070E28″

X-Priority: 3

X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0)

Importance: Normal

X-UIDL: M7B”!GSK!!Lj3″!_~(#!