I constantly receive 2 or 3 emails daily that escape all my security
controls and are so strange.  I know they are some sort of trouble so
I never open one.  The sender is never the same address but they all
have one thing in common--that being highly mispelled words in both
name and subject.  Most of the time it is something you can make out
what they are "trying " to spell.  It is no big deal, but I would give
$5.00 to know what the heck this is all about.  Anyone know?

Hi instanswer,

Most likely, you are getting unsolicited commercial electronic mail,
commonly known as "spam."  The senders want you to see their messages,
and you don't want to see them, so you use filtering software to get
rid of the messages before you see them, and the senders try to evade
the filtering so you see the messages anyway.

The misspelled words are a technique for evading filtering, which
seems to be working at least some of the time in your case, because
you are seeing the messages.  For example, your filtering software may
be vigilantly searching for the word "Viagra" as a spam indicator.  If
the sender instead spells it as "V1agra," the filtering software may
not recognize it, but the intended meaning is clear to a human reader.

A couple of web pages that mention this technique:

http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,60941,00.html

http://www.mtamicro.com/rb/rb031705.html

I hope this is a satisfactory answer to your question.  If you need
any more information, please ask for a clarification.

--efn

Thanks, for the prompt answer.

I've written an article that deals with this type of spam attack,
including recommendations of software to get rid of it:

http://www.andybrain.com/archive/stop_spam.htm

I've had really good results with both products mentioned.

Andy