I was deleting spam from my inbox the other day -- a routine task for me and millions of others. On this seemingly unremarkable occasion, I opened a suspicious-looking e-mail and learned of yet another opportunity to increase my penis size, reverse baldness, and vaporize my mortgage, all with one cheap, accessible, and stylishly illegal drug. I was about to refuse the offer and consign the message to the trash folder that seems to take up half of my Hotmail space these days, when my laserlike gaze, sweeping toward the Delete button, stumbled upon a few lines of text, remarkably plain beside the frantically colored advertisement.
The sentences were gibberish, as if borne to English by the hands of a skilless but enthusiastic translator. Randomly generated, I decided at first, to increase the probability of the advertisement being picked up by a search engine. But the words seemed too random and meaningless to register on anyone's search query, and there would be no need to put them in sentences.
From there, I started thinking about the possibility of using spam to send encrypted messages. One advantage would be the lack of a designated recipient; spam goes to all and sundry, so nobody would know who it was intended for, even if they noticed a hidden message. I'd guess spam is also more likely to go unnoticed by Echelon or whatever techno-spook bureaucracy is currently in vogue. An awkward and circumspect method of communication, probably far inferior to other approaches, but perhaps weird enough to be briefly useful.
And no, I don't really believe my spam mail has hidden messages.
posted on Monday, June 14, 2004
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