OT Scam email detail (new to me)

[HVS]

[Tim Streater]

Often the whole of the email body just consists of an image with a link behind it. They do that to make it more dangerous to click as you observed, but also to reduce the amount of real text there, thus trying to fool spam filters that analyse the text.

[Chris Green]

Yet another good reason for using a command line/text mode E-Mail program. :-)

[billy bookcase]

Scary

Would a spam filter recognise *any* text displayed in the form of an image ?

bb

[Tim Streater]

No, but there's the subject line as well. My spam filter includes that with body text, if any. And one can do a certain amount with ordinary filters, too.

[zall]

Makes more sense to use one with a decent UI which asks you to confirm that you want to follow an embedded link.

[SteveW]

But anyone sensible has their email reader set to not display images or remote content by default.

[SteveW]

No need. Any decent email reader will have options (usually set by default) to not display images or remote content, unless the user specifically opts to do so.

[Brian Gaff]

I'm getting apparently blank emails supposedly from virgin media which if you hit enter on they take you to a carbon copy of the Virgin site, but since I'd never have believed anyone who sends text in graphics like this, its a bit of a giveaway. Brian

[wasbit]

Or turn off external content

[Joe]

Or indeed not render HTML at all.

[Joe]

Sensible people who insist on sending HTML emails include a text alternative for people like me, including all the links. Most do, some don't.

[Chris Green]

Which is why I use a command line/text mode program. I *can* view HTML but 99.9% of the time I don't need to.

[Rob Morley]

Aren't those mutually exclusive conditions?

Too often it's just "your email program can't display this content" when of course it can,, I just chose not to, and sometimes "view this in your browser". But if they can't be bothered to supply alternative text I often can't be bothered to look at the HTML version. If something is probably dodgy but I'm still curious I'll just disable networking before clicking anything.

[Rod Speed]

Not viable given that most bills come like that now.

[Tim Streater]

My app does that by defualt unless you've moved the email to a mailbox which is not Junk or Trash.