Images in spam

osgood

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Lately I've been getting a lot of spam with a heading "Investor Watch Alert" that seems to contain all the text information in an image.

However when I save the image it saves as a bmp and when viewed it is a white background with a few "scratches" on it in black. The coloured text is not in the image.
Can anyone explain this and is there a way to automatically delete this crap from the mail server before it gets downloaded onto my puter???
 
Osgood:

Can you set a filter in your email program to filter any incoming emails that contain the heading you mentioned? ("Investor Watch Alert" )?

Many programs allow filtering by the above method.

Also, I believe some allow you to delete any incoming emails containing images, BMP being one image type.
 
I'm getting a LOT of these too.

The trick is that they're mixing the letters up in a very random way so it "Draws" the final result on your screen. It uses control characters to quickly move the cursor around to pop in all the letters - similar to hangman. Because this process is so random and doesn't use dictionary words, it is very difficult to catch with a filtering program.

Mike
 
Investor watch alert is part of the image.
I really wanted to use something to delete them off the server.

What do you think of Mailwasher???
 
I used to use mailwasher but then my computer crashed and when I tried to download it again they didnt' have the program up.

I was disappointed - I liked that program - they must have updated it. Basically it's the same as Mail Washer - it lets you know that there is mail before your Outlook does. When you see the icon in the tray you click on it and then you can preview it before you download it and decide if you want it on the "good" or "bad" list.

If you put it on the bad list then it's blocked and they have a sort of network of some sort so when other people keep getting the same spam addresses it will automatically block them from your system. You will be blocked from emails that you never get before you can get them, if you know what i mean.

At least, that was the way it worked before I lost it.

Our internet service provider installed a spam protection program so we get a lot less than we used to now.

Now, though, I block any sender that I don't recognize and seems fishy to me before I even open it. I've got a fairly good idea of who we should be getting mail from and I can usually tell from the titles.
 
I just went to the site and they still don't seem to have the freeware there but it looks as though you can buy it.

I liked it - I really missed it at first when it was gone.
 
I get a half dozen “hot stock tips” almost daily.

My e-mail filtering won’t work on them ‘cause they keeping changing the sender name and domain. I have pretty much given up on trying to block them.

My virus software works overtime scanning the images and really slows down my almost automatic, knee jerk deletion of that cr*p.

My concern is not so much they clutter my In Box, but that the images may contain viruses. It would be a good idea, I think, to make sure your virus software is updated regularly.
 
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