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December 20, 2006

So your ISP won't let you host images?

It seems that even if your ISP won't allow you to host images you can convert them into a file type that allows you to store them within the HTML file itself. It is covered in RFC 2397. It seems that spammers could work serious mischief with this because they can imbed the image as part of the HTML of the email, so there isn't a remote download that they can intercept. That said, because normally spammers can tell the email address is valid by waiting for the user to download the image (that's why they don't show them to you automatically any longer) there isn't any way to tell that an email with this sort of image has been downloaded. Since it also makes them more expensive (each email is larger, so it uses more bandwidth instead of only valid emails being opened) it might be too expensive for them to make much use of.

Thanks to Hackzine.com for the tip.

The code itself looks like this, but I couldn't get it to work on the blog software.

Source

SRC="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODdhMAAwAPAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAMAAw
AAAC8IyPqcvt3wCcDkiLc7C0qwyGHhSWpjQu5yqmCYsapyuvUUlvONmOZtfzgFz
ByTB10QgxOR0TqBQejhRNzOfkVJ+5YiUqrXF5Y5lKh/DeuNcP5yLWGsEbtLiOSp
a/TPg7JpJHxyendzWTBfX0cxOnKPjgBzi4diinWGdkF8kjdfnycQZXZeYGejmJl
ZeGl9i2icVqaNVailT6F5iJ90m6mvuTS4OK05M0vDk0Q4XUtwvKOzrcd3iq9uis
F81M1OIcR7lEewwcLp7tuNNkM3uNna3F2JQFo97Vriy/Xl4/f1cf5VWzXyym7PH
hhx4dbgYKAAA7"
ALT="Larry">

Posted by OneEyedMan at December 20, 2006 2:24 PM

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