I get lots of spam, and often there is a paragraph of gibberish included, such as:

otrafub irbgdcy cxgla ukuvqbog- izibcogtx zribiyzt eeoswyq
ipibwqvi ftgqx dfvcaysa lxzribmt, ggptn, euduwahma jpcfqdrhf
fozpyufve egmfoejfe ypugb flnagdwdc, atzco guafudh
bgknsf hyxfrfa qolebts mkbfwyvm yevnfto, lgvvjvp rertnjvnj
exxqaf ljsqoq rmuwld pzliza kupsbj bekskbem ussdbxbod

What does this mean?  Why does the spammer include this?

---

Clarification of Question by pdq2-ga on 15 Jun 2004 16:46 PDT

Then sometimes the gibberish is real words, such as:

estimate glimmer quid durance larson contradictory nrc substitute 
 coltsfoot consulate actuate bondage leftover deuterate bonus whitewash 
 ahead atlantica guiding house mobster awesome aylesbury punt 
 exempt divisive houston selector appertain villainous indemnity

PDQ2,

Hello, the random gibberish is to fool the spam filter into thinking
it's a random email. Some spam filters won't accept emails that are
word for word with others that are spam, so this makes each email
"unique" Also, some Internet providers won't let you mass mail the
same thing over and over, so it's way to bypass that as well.

The not so gibberish, but still random words are padding a spam
message with real words, to get past the filters that many mail
programs have. The filters recognize specific spam words, and filter
those MSGS out. This is a way to get words in there that will let the
spam into your inbox, as opposed to junk mail folder.

I hope this explains it.
If this answer requires further explanation, please request
clarification before rating it, and I'll be happy to look into this
further.
Nenna-GA
Google Answers Researcher

Spammers often include random text strings to fool spam filters.  Each
piece of spam could include randomly generated text (gibberish) so
that each email appears to be unique.  If spammers sent the exact same
email to everyone on their list, there would be a higher chance that
spam filter would pick it up.

Perhaps they are trying to get around email filters.

You may be interested in some of the comments here:

http://www.answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=295228

Thank you for the rating. I am glad I could be of help.

Nenna-GA

This trick, however, will NOT get around a good Bayesian spam filter.
In fact, there is no trick that gets around all Bayesian spam filters.

I saw a roundup of Bayesian filters recently. The best rated was
SpamBayes, available here: http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/

If that's too complicated for you, Mozilla Thunderbird, an excellent
bloat-free email client (similar to Outlook Express, but smaller,
faster, simpler, and less buggy) has built-in bayesian filtering:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/

Yeah, I too recomend you get Mozilla Thunderbird as your primary
e-mail client. I uninstalled Outlook on my PC and got Thunderbird and
had used it for months and found it was the best. It takes filters out
about 90% of my spam.