Language spammers are quick to adapt all English spam tricks. We often see them apply various spam methods, such as the insertion of randomized characters, digits, or symbols into header and body text or the sending of spam messages as document or image attachments in order to bypass spam filters on a daily basis. In fact, they have learned so well (and quickly) that they are becoming spam trick innovators, with their language as an added advantage. Now you can read (or rather, “speak”) different language messages utilizing this new spam trend—there is a new trick that you won’t find in English spam. In this new trick, language spammers are taking advantage of playing around with pronunciation, spelling, and different written characters in their languages. We recently observed Russian and Chinese spammers applying these tricks in their spam ads. The following two samples are from the same online marketing spammer. In the first example, the spammer sent out Russian language spam email that is selling ads: Using this latest trick, spammers sent out mail with the same content but with the Russian words spelled out using letters from the English alphabet. In other words, when the message is read aloud, it still sounds like Russian: We have seen this spam trick being used in Chinese spam. There are more than 40,000 Chinese characters with basic meanings. However, some characters might have the same pronunciation but will represent different Chinese words or meanings. Recently, Chinese fake invoice spammers replaced their Arabic numeral-based contact information with Chinese financial numeral characters or Chinese characters with the same pronunciation. (Chinese numeral characters are written for financial and normal usage. Financial numeral characters are used to prevent financial forgeries.) The following chart displays numeral characters in different usages and possible characters that can replace Arabic numerals: In the below fake invoice sample, the spammer replaced the Arabic numerals with both Chinese numeral characters and Chinese characters with a similar pronunciation. Spammers can create thousands of combinations for numeral-based contact information with this new trick! Body Translation: ii Our company provides (<invoice---p..iao for all kind of business) also issue invoice in need call== llll 《136.xx3.8xx84》Mr.Leellll ========================== Note: My thanks to blog contributor Emily Liu.