A couple of questions

Ken Williams · Post by **Ken Williams** » 12 Dec 2005 6:56 pm

I get emails often that have text but are just nosense phrases. Is this some type of encryption, or just someone with too much free time on their hands?

Secondly, I have a windows 98 computer in another room of the house. I want to have Windows media player or some other program from the net installed on it. Do I just download the program to this computer(XP) and save it to "E" drive(CDRW) on CD and install it on the windows 98 computer? Of course, assuming that I download a windows 98 version of the program. Just wanted to confirm that procedure before I wasted alot time for nothing.

Thanks,
Ken
http://home.ipa.net/~kenwill

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 13 Dec 2005 4:24 am

Usually those e-mails are spam (at least what I've got).

As far as getting a media player for the other PC. Some media players only download an "installation" setup for the PC and then that accesses the web to actually download and install the program. In those cases you would need the old PC on line.

There are media players around that will allow you to download the entire program and in those cases you can download it on one PC, burn a CD and install it on another.

Ken Williams · Post by **Ken Williams** » 13 Dec 2005 2:55 pm

Thanks for the help Jack. There's a couple of programs that I would like have on the older computer.

As far as the emails, I was aware that they were some type of spam. I guess what I'm asking is what is the purpose. Most don't look like they are trying to sell anything, although I haven't examined them that closely. They just contain text like:

"The bottle house baseball freeway carefree hairdryer was lately blue nosebleed. Buyer walks concrete upstairs color lead"

Stuff like that. I just don't understand the purpose if there is one.

Thanks,
Ken

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 13 Dec 2005 10:43 pm

Ken said: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>
They just contain text like:

"The bottle house baseball freeway carefree hairdryer was lately blue nosebleed. Buyer walks concrete upstairs color lead"
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Ken;
That gibberish is inserted in an attempt to fool Bayesian (learning) spam filters, like Spam Assassin or MailWasher Pro. The idea was that by serving up this innocent junk text the filter would give up and pass the message on as legitimate, ignoring the "payload" that is usually encoded inside html tags further down the page. When you read such an email in an html capable email client you will not usually see the gibberish, just the spam message. In some cases you will see both the message and the junk text.

------------------
Bob "Wiz" Feinberg
Moderator of the SGF Computers Forum
Visit my Wiztunes Steel Guitar website at: http://www.wiztunes.com/
or my computer troubleshooting website: Wizcrafts Computer Services

Ken Williams · Post by **Ken Williams** » 14 Dec 2005 6:23 am

Thanks Wiz, you answered my question. I figured that some of the nonsense titles of spam email was to try to get by some word recognition blocker, but didn't really understand why the nonsense would be in the text. I understand now.

Ken