Are spammers getting desperate? Recently we’ve seen spammers switch from text based spam, with random paragraphs to images, and then to pdf, which seemed like the new hot spam format. But this morning I had a couple interesting spams get through the spam filter.

One of them looked like this:

H,E_R’E WE GO AGAIN.!

T.H_E B*I-G O.N+E BE_FORE T*H+E SEPTEMBER.R ALLY’!

T*H-E MAR KET IS ABO,UT TO P*O_P’, A’N+D SO IS E X,M’T+!

T ick: —-

5-d+ay po.tentia.l: 0.. 4’0

Firm : EXCHA*NG,E ——- (Ot+her O.T-C*: —–.P K)

A+s+k_: 0..+1+0 (+.25.0.0%) UP TO 2*5.% in 1 day

N*o.t o,n,l*y d’o e+s t,h,i_s f i*r’m h-a v’e gr*eat fu-ndamen’tals,

b u t getti*ng t-h.i s opp+ortunit,y at t,h e righ,t t-i.m e-,

righ_t bef.ore t_h e ra*lly is w+h-a-t m,akes t.h i s d.e a l so sw*eet!

T+h-i.s a gr eat o.,pportunity to at leas,t do’uble up!

I can barely make out what that says, it’s harder to read than 1337 5p34k mxd w/ AOL spk. The PDF spam, while effective at getting through, required the end user to actually open the pdf and read it, but it was actually, you know, readable. I would really like to know who is still making sending out spam like this worthwhile. Do people sit around and decipher it because they think they’re going to get some secret thing nobody else does? Is it still cost effective for spammers to buy email lists from the black market? Ah, If only I had the time to do research on spam. Maybe somebody already did it for me.