Are Spammers Just Stupid?

As the author of an antispam tool, I keep myself aware of the latest trends in spam. Most offending messages have the same give-away content they did two years ago. Only about 5 to 10% of messages are substantially tougher to detect.

This is the reason you can set the filter to "conservative" mode and still catch the bulk of unwanted messages.

The tougher to filter messages usually make serious compromises to slip past filters. More and more spammers are willing to do this in order to avoid efforts to block e-mail users don't want. Many messages contain only a body of random text and a link to the spammer's website.

SpamButcher uses some pretty smart tricks to detect the patterns in this kind of spam. Still, every now and then I see something that passes completely under the radar. On rare occasion, it is well composed enough to still communicate the intended message.

While SpamButcher uses some unique methods, it's not entirely dissimilar from other products on the market. These messages undoubtedly are giving other software publishers problems also.

So, if it's possible to compose quality spam that slips past the mail blockers, why don't more spammers do it? My conclusion is that a lot of research is needed to pull it off. Most spammers don't have a solid understanding of what research they need to do. I'm going to try to avoid giving them any clues.

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