Graphics and Spam

[John B]

I have the Display Images turned off on outlook. It makes the emails load
faster and I do not need to see offensive graphics. In the last month or two
there has be an explossion in the amount of spam getting through my filters.
They have no textual content for the filter to lock onto. Rather they make
use of graphics to contain the information on what they are trying to sell.
In addition these emails are addressing the graphics using their CID: .
Because of this, the graphic are getting displayed even though I have that
turned off.

Any suggestions on how to 1) filter these emails 2) if the email gets
through, how can i supress the graphics? The worse offenders are marketing
Ephedra, online teaching degrees, ColonAid, Make Cash Working from Home,
Cruises, and AcaiBerry.... that's just the list from today with multiple
emails on some of these. Obviously the "From" address varies on every one to
prevent blocking.

 

[VanguardLH]

I have the Display Images turned off on outlook. It makes the emails load
faster and I do not need to see offensive graphics. In the last month or two
there has be an explossion in the amount of spam getting through my filters.
They have no textual content for the filter to lock onto. Rather they make
use of graphics to contain the information on what they are trying to sell.
In addition these emails are addressing the graphics using their CID: .
Because of this, the graphic are getting displayed even though I have that
turned off.

Any suggestions on how to 1) filter these emails 2) if the email gets
through, how can i supress the graphics? The worse offenders are marketing
Ephedra, online teaching degrees, ColonAid, Make Cash Working from Home,
Cruises, and AcaiBerry.... that's just the list from today with multiple
emails on some of these. Obviously the "From" address varies on every one to
prevent blocking.

The images are not attached but instead inline (i.e., disposition=inline
rather than disposition=attached; see source for MIME parameters). The
image blocking in Outlook is for *external* content, not for included or
inline content.

The inline image might be a particular type. For awhile, spammers were
enamored with .gif content. Look in the headers of the image-laden
e-mails. There should be a content-type header that shows the content
is a .gif file. You can use a rule in Outlook to look for that string
in the message headers. I prefer to test on headers, if possible. If
you look at the source of the mail, in the MIME headers you should see
something like filetype=gif or filename=<something>.gif. I don't get
..gif files from anyone other than a spammer.