At 7:33 PM -0600 5/16/03, Vernon Schryver wrote:
> I suspect we'll see legitimate mailers sending more included graphics
soon as well. MSN and Hotmail are both providing (or about to)
provide filters to turn off automatic inclusion of external graphics.
And the next Outlook is supposedly shipping with the option off by
default. None of that bodes well for content-filters.
...
That does not follow on two counts.
There's no law that says that "content-filters" can't recognize
identical pictures. Spam pictures are likely to vary less than spam
When I say "content-filtering" I'm talking about the stuff that
happens on a solo desktop that may or may not be connected to the
internet. Any type of checksum comparison involves a centralized
service. I would normally put that in a different category. (Time
for me to go reread the last taxonomy of solutions document.) You're
right. That type of filtering may do well with pictures. Of course
you may have to deal with random fuzz there too....
Such changes will cause fewer total graphics in all mail, if you count
URLs pointing to pictures as "graphics," as I think you must. Some
I don't. Because the conversation was about the size of email on the
mail server.
The biggest thing MSN, AOL, and Hotmail could do against spam is turn
off HTML by default.
Turning off email completely would work as well. Outside of the
technical community almost all the email I see is HTML. I don't
think it's going to happen--whether or not it should.
--
Kee Hinckley
http://www.messagefire.com/ Junk-Free Email Filtering
http://commons.somewhere.com/buzz/ Writings on Technology and Society
I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.
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