2003 and Microsoft STILL cannot get their rules right

  • Thread starter Thread starter George Hester
  • Start date Start date
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George Hester

The rule is if http is in the body delete it. email spam came in with http://www.agreatspamsite.com Outlook 2003 missed it all to hell. There is no encoding so let's not make excuses. Microsoft just cannot get their rules right. I seriously believe spammers love Micropsoft products because they know they are worthless in stopping their stuff.
 
Outlook doesn't scan html - and many spammers munge the html with comments
every other letter so they aren't caught by spam filters.

Are you using Outlook with the spam settings on high?

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)



Search for answers: http://groups.google.com
Most recent posts to the Outlook newsgroups:
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_ugroup=microsoft.public.outlook.*&num=30


The rule is if http is in the body delete it. email spam came in with
http://www.agreatspamsite.com Outlook 2003 missed it all to hell. There is
no encoding so let's not make excuses. Microsoft just cannot get their
rules right. I seriously believe spammers love Micropsoft products because
they know they are worthless in stopping their stuff.
 
No this one was as clear as day. No munging. Don't really know why it wasn't caught. Note: the spammer cannot munge href or http. Not possible that violates the rules of HTML. No comments in attributes. They can encode it. I know that. But that is still easy to catch. %#hex; or %#hex will catch those that are encoded. The problem is HTML will allow which sux. Oh well not many have degenerated to that yet. But they will count on it.

I used to be able to catch these in Outlook 2002. But with HTMLBody offlimits to me in VBA in Outlook 2003 that took care of that.
 
"Outlook doesn't scan html..." What? I don't think so. Almost all e-mail spam is HTML. If Outlook 2003 didn't scan HTML using rules then rules are lamer then I thought.

I have set up scanning (a rule) for href and http in the body and I'm catching about almost 100%. Not one has gotten into the Inbox today and I've received 50.

Oh the filter level? Don't use it. I doubt it works. Not because Microsoft can't get it right but there is just too many types of spam for any filter to work well for long. The ticket is searching the body of e-mail for href or http. There is nothing a spammer can do about that except for sending mail with no links. The Nigerians figured that out long ago.
 
So 100% of your mail that contains http:// or href is spam? I'll stick with
the Outlook filter that gets the spam (including the Nigerian spam) and
leaves the messages that aren't spam but contain links.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)



Search for answers: http://groups.google.com
Most recent posts to the Outlook newsgroups:
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_ugroup=microsoft.public.outlook.*&num=30


"Outlook doesn't scan html..." What? I don't think so. Almost all e-mail
spam is HTML. If Outlook 2003 didn't scan HTML using rules then rules are
lamer then I thought.

I have set up scanning (a rule) for href and http in the body and I'm
catching about almost 100%. Not one has gotten into the Inbox today and
I've received 50.

Oh the filter level? Don't use it. I doubt it works. Not because
Microsoft can't get it right but there is just too many types of spam for
any filter to work well for long. The ticket is searching the body of
e-mail for href or http. There is nothing a spammer can do about that
except for sending mail with no links. The Nigerians figured that out long
ago.
 
yes. Almost all. We can set up an exception like when I win an ebay item "ebay" will be in the href. So over time we build what we need. But yes almost all spam has href or http and I really don't delete them. I send them to a folder so I can peruse them later. Diane this catches almost all my spam. It don't catch plain mail spam without hrefs or plain mail where the Exchange generator converts www to an active link. But most of my correspondances just have normal plain text and Web addresses are not included.

--
George Hester
__________________________________
Diane Poremsky said:
So 100% of your mail that contains http:// or href is spam? I'll stick with
the Outlook filter that gets the spam (including the Nigerian spam) and
leaves the messages that aren't spam but contain links.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)



Search for answers: http://groups.google.com
Most recent posts to the Outlook newsgroups:
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_ugroup=microsoft.public.outlook.*&num=30


"Outlook doesn't scan html..." What? I don't think so. Almost all e-mail
spam is HTML. If Outlook 2003 didn't scan HTML using rules then rules are
lamer then I thought.

I have set up scanning (a rule) for href and http in the body and I'm
catching about almost 100%. Not one has gotten into the Inbox today and
I've received 50.

Oh the filter level? Don't use it. I doubt it works. Not because
Microsoft can't get it right but there is just too many types of spam for
any filter to work well for long. The ticket is searching the body of
e-mail for href or http. There is nothing a spammer can do about that
except for sending mail with no links. The Nigerians figured that out long
ago.

--
George Hester
__________________________________
Diane Poremsky said:
Outlook doesn't scan html - and many spammers munge the html with comments
every other letter so they aren't caught by spam filters.

Are you using Outlook with the spam settings on high?

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)



Search for answers: http://groups.google.com
Most recent posts to the Outlook newsgroups:
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_ugroup=microsoft.public.outlook.*&num=30


The rule is if http is in the body delete it. email spam came in with
http://www.agreatspamsite.com Outlook 2003 missed it all to hell. There is
no encoding so let's not make excuses. Microsoft just cannot get their
rules right. I seriously believe spammers love Micropsoft products because
they know they are worthless in stopping their stuff.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
I'll look into the filters. I may be surprised. I'm not a ludite Diane.

--
George Hester
__________________________________
"Outlook doesn't scan html..." What? I don't think so. Almost all e-mail spam is HTML. If Outlook 2003 didn't scan HTML using rules then rules are lamer then I thought.

I have set up scanning (a rule) for href and http in the body and I'm catching about almost 100%. Not one has gotten into the Inbox today and I've received 50.

Oh the filter level? Don't use it. I doubt it works. Not because Microsoft can't get it right but there is just too many types of spam for any filter to work well for long. The ticket is searching the body of e-mail for href or http. There is nothing a spammer can do about that except for sending mail with no links. The Nigerians figured that out long ago.
 
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