“But I don’t like spam!”
Alert Janeite Adrienne was astonished to discover that a spam e-mail she received contained a snippet of text from Emma.
I don’t know which is more distressing: spam using Jane in this way or that my spam filter doesn’t like Jane, either, and wouldn’t let her through.
We posted about this phenomenon a while back, but it’s worth repeating for newer visitors.
By including random text the spammers hope to fool the filters into thinking that a human, not a spammer, wrote the message.
[. . .]
But as Clive Thompson points out, automatically generating text that reads like it was written by a human hand is difficult. This is perhaps why some spammers are turning to out-of-copyright novels for their text. It is an ideal source of real writing.
It’s probably coincidence, so hang on to your tinfoil hats, Gentle Readers, and be glad they’re not sending you, say, Hardy.
July 10th, 2007 at 6:09 am
But, Mags, I never send spam!
July 11th, 2007 at 9:11 am
Monty Python and Jane Austen - two of the best things to come from England.