Anyway, so the e-mail looked thusly in my e-mail client:Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Then I went to copy/paste the text to a buddy over IM so he could see how it was jumbled, but when I pasted it, the text was correct!Drae Blcraays Mrebme,
Tsih eamil was snet by the Balcrays serevr to vreify yoru eiaml arddess. You muts celpmote tsih prcoess by clicnikg on the likn bleow and engniret in the slaml windwo yoru Blcraays Membsrehip nbmuer, pcssaode and mlbaromee word. Tsih is deno for yuor petorction - beuacse smoe of our membesr no legnor haev acecss to tehir eliam ardesses and we mtsu vfiry it. To vfirey yruo emlia aerddss and acssec yruo bakn acnuoct, clkci on the lkni bwole:
That was odd, so I decided to paste it into notepad. What notepad revealed is an extra ascii character surrounding the letters which were jumbled (notice the letters aren't merely jumbled, but reversed). Apparantly Windows interpreted the ascii characters when pasted and put them in the correct order!Dear Barclays Member,
This email was sent by the Barclays server to verify your email address. Your must complete this process by clicking on the link below and entering in the small window your Barclays Membership number, passcode, and memorable word. This is done for your protection - because some of our members no longer have access to their e-mail addresses and we must verify it. To verify your e-mail address and access your bank account, click on the link below:
So, they bypassed the spam filter because the letters were jumbled, but Windows is kind enough to display the whole text in the correct order. Luckily, I use Thunderbird which just suppressed the extra ascii characters and left them jumbled.
If some of these people would put all of this energy to something good, who knows how far techonoly would advance!