Re: [anti-spam-wg] Imaged spam

[Walter Ian Kaye walter@localhost]

At 06:54p +0100 06/21/2006, Michele Neylon :: Blacknight.ie didst 
inscribe upon an electronic papyrus:

> peter h wrote:
>  > Throwing away html-formatted e-mail is a good way to deal with this type
> >  of abuse.
>
> That sounds like complete overkill. There are ways of blocking the image
> spam, but simply blocking all HTML email isn't the sanest...

I do both, because I like to know what exactly it was about the HTML 
message that made it get blocked.

And don't forget, I think it was a given that you would whitelist the 
few senders from whom you do allow it (like one's mother, or those 
who are still using AOL 7.0 or whichever version was broken; i'm too 
lazy to check expita).

My rules go something like this (vastly simplified for brevity):

if whitelisted sender, let it through
if multipart, trash it (recoverable)
if image spam, delete it
if obfuscated html, delete it
if html, delete it

My filter logs its actions, so I regularly check and see if something 
was deleted that I need resent (and whitelisted to allow through, 
duh).

It works for me.


At 09:59a +0100 06/22/2006, Michele Neylon :: Blacknight Solutions 
didst inscribe upon an electronic papyrus:

Gert Doering <
	    
	    
> said on 22 June 2006 09:57:

 > Blocking all HTML email sounds like a very good plan to get rid of
 > current and future crap e-mail.

Only if you live in a little cave .....

In the real world HTML email is used by a very large number of businesses,
so if you can afford to cutoff your livelihood go ahead. I don't mind :)

I think the point is that most HTML mail is spam, and most spam is 
HTML (well, it was, but seems to be going back more to text 
specifically to get around our attempts to block it by blocking HTML, 
heh), so by blocking HTML you block a large amount of spam. Also, 
HTML is "unsolicited" bulk inside the email, so that's a kind of UBE 
in and of itself. Waste of bandwidth (time) and disk space, and adds 
nothing of value. If I want a Web page, there's this thing called the 
World Wide Web where they were designed for; it was never designed 
for email, and was only put there out of sheer laziness.


At 10:05a +0100 06/22/2006, Michele Neylon :: Blacknight Solutions 
didst inscribe upon an electronic papyrus:

Gert Doering <
	    
	    
> said on 22 June 2006 10:03:

 > Well, YMMV, but I just *cannot*read* HTML mail anyway - as I'm using

 a text mode e-mail client.

That's your choice

 > Surprisingly enough, communication with our customers works very well.

Lucky you

 > The only things that come in as HTML-*only* are SPAM, Advertising,

 and Viruses.

Not my experience.

Thus the "YMMV" phrase above. That's why configurability is good. :-D

-Walter