Spammers have discovered a new trick.

According to a report in USA Today, image-based spam is experiencing a huge growth spurt. Late last year it accounted for 1% of total spam messages; now it has suddenly risen to 21%.

In the newspaper article, journalist Jon Swartz describes the problem:

The newest spam uses technology that varies the content of individual messages — through colors, backgrounds, picture sizes or font types — so they appear to be distinct to spam filters… As a result, the messages are like snowflakes: No two are alike… The surge in new spam has largely eluded software filters and eaten up space on e-mail systems because each message is more than seven times larger than regular spam…

I’ve certainly noticed a recent surge in the amount of spam getting past Apple Mail’s excellent Junk Filter.

Much of it is image-based, although I am favoured more with various aids for my sexual potency than with the stock scams that are usually associated with image spam.

Mail’s Junk filter, based on Latent Semantic Analysis, only gets smarter as it goes along. I hope it is not a slow learner. Although, since the filter is text-based, this new form of spam may have outflanked it.

[Thanks, Bob]