From: spambayes-bounces+rcoe=cambridgema.gov@python.org [mailto:spambayes-bounces+rcoe=cambridgema.gov@python.org] On Behalf Of skip@pobox.com Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2006 11:55 PM To: Peter Barker Cc: spambayes@python.org Subject: Re: [Spambayes] Spam in Images

Peter> For my spam and non-spam, a good indicator is that I very seldom Peter> receive non-spam messages with a .gif image attached (attachments Peter> are usually .jpg or various document types). And if a wanted mail Peter> has a .gif attachment it has much more text than the usual Peter> gibberish in the spam messages (because it is usually just a Peter> company logo or similar, and not essential to the message). So if Peter> spambayes can score attachment type and text size it may help.

True, but for those people with correspondents who do send them mail with image attachments ("Subject: Cute pictures of my new granddaughter"), the presence or absence of images may fall around the middle and thus either not be used at all, or only provide a negligible bump in one direction or the other.

But Peter's point is that a picture of somebody's granddaughter won't be a GIF image; it will be a JPEG. Digital cameras don't use GIF, and hardly anybody else does either. Except spammers, who presumably care less about image quality than about file size. I suppose the result of scoring GIF images as spam will be that spammers will switch to JPEG. But anything that makes their lives more complicated is all to the good.