[Spambayes] Inspecting images (was: SpamBayes to HandleEmbedded Images)

[Tony Meyer]

> Something really needs to be done about this embedded image Spam.   
> Honestly,
> SpamBayes appears to be ineffective against all these images,

Can you post an example of a message that is incorrectly classified,  
*with the spambayes clues* for the message?  The Outlook plug-in  
provides this via the "Show Clues for this Message" item in the  
SpamBayes menu.

[...]
> I'm sure OCR isn't the only way, but the words are there in plain  
> view.  It
> seems like the obvious way to resolve this.

Obvious isn't always best.  One of the tenets here is "stupid beats  
smart" - I think doing some sort of OCR on images would fall into the  
"smart" category, and generating simple tokens from the images would  
fall into the "stupid" category and be more successful.  Just my  
opinion, of course, but that's what I'd test if I had time (perhaps  
over the (southern hemisphere) summer...or maybe I can convince one  
of my employers that this would be worth doing in paid time).

> SpamBayes has been such a great program for me and my colleges,  
> family and
> friends.  I can only hope that the project sees fit to resolve this  
> soon.

It's not really a case of "seeing fit" - the issue is that the  
developers are very short on time at the moment (contributions have  
always been, and always will be, welcome) and, in addition, this is a  
complex problem.

=Tony.Meyer

-- 
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