spam classification breaker

[Paul Rubin]

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at comcast.net> writes:
> ... send spam to you by attaching it as a reply to a
> message you posted to a public mailing list.  I retain your original subject
> line, and the full text of your original message.  It's almost certain that
> the things you post to public mailing lists contain words that are hammy to
> you.  But this is still much more expensive for me than just blasting a
> single email to millions of addresses in bulk,

Maybe not that much more expensive.  I thought that most spammers
already send a unique (randomized) message to each victim, to get past
hashing and fingerprinting schemes.

> and it's not an effective *sales* pitch: it will get through your
> filter, and everyone looks at replies to their own messages, but
> when you see that it's really an advertisment you're much more
> likely to be pissed at the sender than to givee them money <heh>.

That's no different than any other spam.  

> Since the real goal of spam is to sell product, it's not enough just
> to evade filters.

The goal of spam is usually for the spammer to collect money from a
product seller, and the spammer does that based on getting messages
past filters.  The spammer doesn't care how much actual product gets
sold.