There are six hundred quintillion ways to spell Viagra
You may have noticed that pharmacy spammers aren’t the best spellers. For example, when you receive an e-mail solicitation to buy Viagra from a no prescription pharmacy, you will often notice that the word “Viagra” is spelled in a way similar to these:
V1agra
Via’gra
Viagr(a
Viagr^a
Viágrá
Viagara
Viag@ra
Viag&ra
vi*gra
/iagra
Why the bad spelling? The reason is that your e-mail program is equipped with spam-filtering software that works by searching for patterns in spam e-mails. For example, most e-mails that contain the word “Viagra” are spam — which causes the filtering programs to automatically dump these messages in spam folders or delete them altogether.
By intentionally misspelling words like “Viagra” or “Canadian pharmacy” or “no prescription pharmacy,” the spammers increase their chances of getting past the filters and into your inbox.
A researcher (who had been flooded with spam e-mails) got curious about how many incorrect ways a spammer could spell a simple, six-letter word like Viagra. He found there were over 600 quintillion possible variations — 600,426,974,379,824,381,952, to be exact.
Check out his methodology here.
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March 16th, 2009 at 7:58 am
My question is why is it always viagra that is being sold? There are hundreds of other products available, but why focus on that one mainly? I'm sure its possible, but surely there cant be that much of a demand?
May 21st, 2009 at 7:48 am
[...] covered the problem of Viagra spam previously (including Viagra holiday spam!) It’s good to know that people are beginning to [...]
April 16th, 2010 at 2:01 pm
Why?? Because our society ALWAYS concentrates on male “needs”. I don’t believe any insurance company should cover any sexual enhancement drug for men. It’d drop the premiums of those of us who pay for company insurance. So they turn to on line pharmacies. I think the demand is high, and like most things in this world – if you have the funds you can get these meds on line w/out a prescription. Uninsured folks – tell us just how much these drugs cost you? Bet in Canada they are much less expensive.