What does it mean when an obvious scam e-mail, possibly "mere" phishing, includes in (whatever we call its signing-off small-print) what looks like a pointless list of dozens, perhaps hundreds of random words that are not, for instance, tags, as below?
Here, the yellow part seems both to make sense, and to have nothing to do with the scammy message.
If this is the wrong area to Ask such a Question, can anyone please redirect me?
It's a method of evading spam filters. An early spam filter algorithm, for example, was "Make sure the words-to-link ratio of the email is high enough." So stuffing words in was a way to make the email pass muster. Bayesian filters made that problem more complex, and spammers changed their approach to meet that as well.
The ongoing evolution of spam vs. filters means that nowadays spam will commonly include a veritable dictionary of words, preferably hidden away in HTML that won't display as part of the email.
