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ajtaylor (1283)

ajtaylor
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http://www.drewtaylor.com/

Journal of ajtaylor (1283)

Friday August 08, 2003
02:36 PM

HTML spam w/ embedded images

[ #14004 ]

I've started getting HTML spam where the images are embedded as separate MIME attachments within the message. The image links look like . I have the option in my mail software (Thunderbird) to not load images in HTML mail, but this method allows them through anyway. It really got my attention today when a spam for a German porn site came up w/ an image of a nude woman. The bad part is that I was in my office at work! No harm done but it could have been embarrasing to say the least...

Anyone know of workarounds for not displaying these sort of messages/images? Should I just turn off HTML mail all together? I just want to avoid throwing out the baby w/ the bath water. And I'd like to note that I send email in text format, not HTML. :-)


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  • I discard all email that's HTML only, and have never (to my knowledge, and I check the discard pile once a week) had a false positive. YMMV.
    • Do you have friends you send you mail from Hotmail or MSN accounts? They changed a while back to make it impossible (or possibly only much harder) to avoid sending HTML only. I think SpamAssassin's default rules even got modified to avoid the HTML-only penalty for messages from there.

      Although now that I think of it, I haven't noticed any of those messages in a couple of months. Maybe they changed back.
  • I don't know which MUA it was, but I did see one once that asked for every HTML message if the user really wanted to see it.

    Perhaps you can make your client do this.
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