Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>]

on Mon, Oct 29, 2001 at 08:47:13AM -0500, Thomas Beckett wrote:
>       I always enjoy Christina's column on Mondays.  Today she tells us
> (after the obligatory XP plug), news of a local company with a new
> product:  spam that detects your email client and includes audio or
> video.  Excerpt:  
> 
> "It's still unclear what effect XP will actually have, but VisionPoint
> media is ready. The fledgling Raleigh company has launched VisionPoint
> 411, a tool for e-mail marketers that can navigate the security
> intricacies of different e-mail programs and XP's added security to
> deliver messages enhanced by audio, video and animation.
> 
> "The software detects the recipient's computer configuration and sends a
> message compatible with their plug-ins. VisionPoint also offers creative
> services to help design souped-up e-mail marketing messages designed to
> rise above the clutter of all that spam hawking cheap life insurance,
> aphrodisiacs and more languishing in e-mail in-boxes everywhere."  

Fortunately, my mail client doesn't support audio, video, HTML, scripting,
atuomatic execution of virus attachments, etc.

Does she happen to include any pointers to info on how we who are mail
administrators can block all mail of that kind from our servers? I get
enough spam as it is, without the file sizes suddenly ballooning.

Don't believe me? Here's a sampling. Since the first of October, I've
received approximately:

 - 243 messages identified as 'could be spam', totalling 1406116 bytes
 - 1675 messages identified as 'probably spam', totalling 10721539 bytes
 - 577 messages my filters didn't catch, but that I identified as spam,
   for a total of 5087506 bytes.

The previous two months were roughly the same. Only 289 and 252 'could be'
and 1492 and 1611 'probably'. 

The only reason I've been keeping it around is that when I get done with
the book I can hack on sendmail for a bit and start tagging the crap not
only based on bad headers, known senders, known open relays, and so on,
but also based on known subject lines. 

Steve

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