Curious email

[jepinto]

A lot of the spam I've been receiving lately looks normal, but when viewing Message Source it looks like

code:

A nice la<!--info-->dy wants to corr<!--info-->espond with you.<!----> chec<!--info-->k her o<!--info-->ut</a><br><BR>
<br>
<br>
<br> Re<!--info-->ply with of<!--info-->f and I wo<!--info-->n't wr<!--info-->ite you again.
<br>

What's the < !-- --> doing?  A way to track who responds?  Subliminal messaging?

[Spartacus]

<!-- --> are HTML comments that are not displayed. At least in HTML websites.
I suppose that email was sent as HTML mail, but somehow got mixed up and therefore, the HTML code - and comments - are displayed.

[tacit]

Sparticus is on the right track.

If you have an HTML email reader, then anything inside <!---> (comment) tags does not display.

The reason spammers do this is to try to sneak past spam filters. Spam filters often will search for certain hrases in mail, such as "Make money" or "Click here" or "Remove here."

The idea is, when YOU read the email, you see "Reply with offer," but your spam filter does not weed out the email, because the spam filter does not see "Remove here," it sees "Re<!--junkhere-->move". So the mail is not stopped by the spam filter.

[Bruce_F]

Jennie, ya mean you don't want to correspond with some nice Russian lady?        

I got a similar email just a few minutes ago. The tags all have my name in them instead of info.

My copy went to SpamCop.

[Xairbusdriver]

Just another reason to get and use POPmonitor. But also a good lesson in how to set up filters, send anything with "<a " and especially "<ing " straight to a "Suspected SPAM" folder. Do not open it until you can verify what is in it. POPmonitor can really help there. Unfortunately, I don't think it will help with IMAP servers, only POP3.     Looks like I may need to add a filter for comment tags now!    

A question: will server side filtering and/or ISP services ever be able to stop this stuff? Isn't the user always going to be responsible for watching what s/he accepts?

Jim C.

[Mayo]

I have HTML turned off in Eudora to avoid the perils of HTML mail.

My question:  Where do these HTML tags appear?  I got the impression that they are contained in the body of the message.  Unless I am mistaken, Eudora only allows filter settings that scan the message headers.

[Highmac]

Picking up on Bruce's post, can you enlighten me on Spamcop please? (I'm sure it's been mentioned here before, but I can't find the reference). From the name it's obvious what it does, but is it purely a US service or international? I've been getting a load of spam, mostly from various names at "recession-specials" and "casino-startup"   Sometimes a Popthing check shows a dozen emails with only two 'real' ones      .
Thanks
As an afterthought, thanks to a post here a long time ago, I turned off HTML in OE, which simplified things considerably.
 
 [ 03-03-2003, 03:52 AM: Message edited by: Highmac ]

[jepinto]

Highmac:

 Thread One
 Thread Two

Anonymous Reporting-SpamCop

Thread Four

#5

Paid SpamCop

Using SpamCop to find IP

All that said, I paid the $15 for a year of SpamCop.  Heck, I figure I waste at least that on reading the &*#$ spam each day.  I don't use the forwarding, I find it easier to sign in and paste the spam-forwarding still requires going to the site to process.

In NS, I have remote images set NOT to load in Mail and Newsgroups, so I miss a lot of the goodies         A spam is opened, then under the View menu, Message Source, then Select All, Copy, then switch to Spamcop, and paste.  It takes a few minutes each morning, but if it stops just one.......

Upon Jim's suggestion, I've been trying out PopMonitor, and it is a real help.  I can quickly see if it's worth my time to use the NS mail, or quickly delete those pesky virii.  One of the nicest things my ISP      has done is add "MailGuard".  It filters about 2/3 of the spam, once every couple of days, I go through "WebMail" and check the folder "just in case"        the titles usually give it away, and clean out the folder.  Averaging 20 or so a day,      In fact, I'm almost insulted if there's only 10 or so  
 
 [ 03-03-2003, 06:03 AM: Message edited by: jepinto ]

[Highmac]

Thanks for that Jennie - boy, am I glad I'm on a flat monthly fee/0800 number set-up    . Just spent 30 minutes reading first three of those links! Have to delay the rest to later... Other things that must be done .
Thanks again.