{"id":428,"date":"2005-12-18T08:31:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-18T16:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=428"},"modified":"2005-12-18T08:31:00","modified_gmt":"2005-12-18T16:31:00","slug":"why-spam-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=428","title":{"rendered":"Why Spam Works"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Reading my Friend of a Friends list, I saw the following posting:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 30 plepoe so far on mapysce can. i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rsceearh at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno&#8217;t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs rpsoet it. OLNY RPSOET IF YOU CAN RAED TIHS&#8230; UATPDE THE NBUMER<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is why spam gets past your filters, and why no filtering program can easily stop spam on its lonesome. The human mind can perceive variations of a word that are pretty far from the original and still identify it. Filtering is mechanical.<\/p>\n<p>This is noted in the book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1559532807\/\" target=\"_blank\">Inversions<\/a> by Scott Kim. Douglas Hofstader (of &#8220;<i>Godel, Esher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid<\/i>&#8221; fame) said in his introduction: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I have always been astounded by the fact that when people read, they gulp up words as wholes, somehow almost bypassing the letter level&#8211;almost as if they could read words without the need to to have the letters there at all! The letters in a word form such a tight community that one grows used to the community independent of the individuals that compose it.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Kim notes also that: &#8220;The great variety of type styles we see in print has trained us to recognize many different shapes as a single letter&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p>So, the next time you get spam, and can figure out what it is saying despite the mispellings, thank the power of your mind. You&#8217;re doing something most machines can&#8217;t do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reading my Friend of a Friends list, I saw the following posting: Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 30 plepoe so far on mapysce can. i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rsceearh at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno&#8217;t mtaetr in waht <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=428\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,98,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-chum","category-security","category-lj-xfer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}