[Spambayes] how spambayes handles image-only spams

Ryan Malayter rmalayter at bai.org
Thu Sep 4 16:32:06 EDT 2003


From: Bill Yerazunis [mailto:wsy at merl.com] 

> No, my corpora agree with Tim Peters 
> - spammers use HTML far more often 
> than "normal" users.

In my opinion, this is simply untrue, at least for the American
corporate user. At most of the U.S.-based companies I've dealt with,
HTML mail is widely used. I remember a Gartner survey that said
something like 90% of corporate desktops have either Outlook/Exchange or
Notes/Domino for messaging. Recent versions of both of these mail
clients create HTML messages by default rather than plain text or some
proprietary rich text format.

I'd say 80% or more of business email I get - most of it from technical
people - is HTML mail, simply because most people leave their Outlook or
Notes mail client in its default configuration.

> Statistically speaking, HTML mail is 
> either from a spammer or from a clueless 
> git, and in either case can usually be 
> delayed without penalty or discarded outright.

As indicated above, I do not think this analysis is true anymore. And
characterizing someone as a clueless git because they don't change their
mail client's default message format or "love" plain text... Well, let
us know when you get back to the real world. 

> Similarly, base-64 encodes are almost _always_ trash.

I agree, except for in-line images sent with email newsletters and the
like.

Regards,

Ryan Malayter
Sr. Network & Database Administrator
Bank Administration Institute
Chicago, Illinois, USA
PGP Key: http://www.malayter.com/pgp-public.txt




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