Image Spam Makes New Breed of Spam

People deploy filters on their computers to keep junk e-mails out, but as technology advances, so do the sophistication of spammers' techniques. As explains Volunteer TV's Stacy Mc Cloud, it seems spam has found a new course to reach inboxes, so the firewalls and filters may be ineffective to stop them.

If a user's mailbox appears to be constantly overloaded i.e., filled with a lot of e-mails from unknown people, the particular person may be a victim to the latest type of spamming.
The new kind of spam mail involves graphics instead of text. These spam mails easily deviate from filters and other anti-spam solutions, says VolunteerTV.com Editor Rich Sobolewski. The new breed of junk e-mails is called "image spam" that dupe spam detectors into believing that the e-mail is from a trusted person.

The 'Image spam' type of junk e-mail substitutes text with pictures, thus fooling spam filters. The images are formed by embedding code in a HTML message that connects to an image file on the Web. Image spam eats up more of network resources than text spam because they are larger than 'ASCII character strings'. These large files consume more bandwidth resulting in reduction of transfer rates.

Sobolewski explains firewalls can't pick up image spam. When they see the pictures they think it is from one of the recipient's friends. This way, the spam goes right through the firewall. The solution is not in just changing the password, say Web experts, but to sign up a spyware program.

After signing the spyware program, it is necessary to double-check all the settings on the computer to make sure they are on. Then it requires repeated updating. Companies, however, are constantly trying to conquer this 'image spam' battle, by creating new software everyday.

If a recipient clicks on an e-mail and recognizes it as spam, he/she should run the anti-virus software as the best practice to save the data and system.

Some of the recent spam messages are encouraging what is called "penny stocks". This involves spammers who buy cheap stocks of some unknown company and then spam them for bidding.

Related article: Image Spam Set to Hit Worldwide PCs Back

» SPAMfighter News - 12/12/2006