Pointless SPAM containing story snippet - Why?

[Glenn Steen]

On 01/09/06, Kevin Miller <Kevin_Miller at ci.juneau.ak.us> wrote:
> Rick Chadderdon wrote:
> > I've gotten a few of those, too.  Since they're structured identically
> > to most of the image spam I get (minus the image), my guess is that
> > they're someone's broken attempt to send image spam.  Probably pointed
> > their spam sending program at the wrong image folder or something.
> > The text portion of those messages might be an attempt to poison a
> > Bayes database, although it might simply be an effort to avoid getting
> > filtered for "not enough text" with an attached image.  I'm about an
> > inch away from dropping all mail with inline images.  I'll train my
> > users to zip 'em up first and have their families do the same.
>
> I wouldn't want to disallow all image files, but might consider just
> blocking gifs.  Wonder what percentage of valid emails use a gif - seems
> that most users either send in jpg, tif or (sigh) bmp.  The gifs all
> come in via the stock spam.  I suppose that some html newsletters and
> such may have a gif in them, but usually they use remote links to keep
> their costs down...
>
> ...Kevin

In the somewhat backward world of financial information, gifs are if
not common, at least an everyday occurence. Usually in that
all-too-spamlike maillist that the users just *have* to have... Sigh.
Not to mention the occasional IFrame, Script tag or Object
Codebase..... They do their damnedest to make my
life...interesting:-).
Could give some example stats if you're really interested:-)

Cheers
-- Glenn
email: glenn < dot > steen < at > gmail < dot > com
work: glenn < dot > steen < at > ap1 < dot > se