Topic: Spam attacks take a new angle

[Clive]

Spam gangs have found a new way of getting into your inbox - by literally changing the angle of their approach.

When image-based spam first appeared, it was able to bypass spam filters because none were designed to read text within images.

Now some filters are able to pick out text within an image to check whether an email is spam or not, so spammers are slanting the text to make it more difficult for the filters to pick up.

"This technique may decrease the detection capabilities of some anti-spam technologies that are heavily reliant upon Optical Character Recognition or edge detection," security company Symantec said in its monthly spam report.

Image-based spam now accounts for more than 38 per cent of all spam emails, according to Symantec.

However, there is some positive news - adult-based spam messages are in decline, accounting for just three per cent of all spam email sent in February, an all-time low.


http://www.symantec.com/