Latest Update: SpamButcher 2.1  
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 Cutting Edge Spam Elimination SpamButcher is a powerful anti-spam program that can stop over 97% of unwanted email.
Bring on the .DOC Spam!The last 60 days or so have seen the popularization of at least three relatively new ways to encapsulate spam messages. Up until recently, almost all spam was either text, a combination of text and HTML or image-based. Now spammers are commonly hiding their actual message content inside a number of different file formats:
By hiding their message inside another file format, spammers confound most spam blocking software. While filter authors are used to detecting the presence of attached images, usually that's the end of their attachment-parsing capabilities. SpamButcher is smart enough to recognize the dimensions of an image, but not much else. It may be time to add one more format to that list. I just received a mysterious message with an attached .DOC (Microsoft Word) file. Word files have previously been used to spread viruses, but that hasn't been as much of a problem since Microsoft tightened security. A peak inside the document revealed a Nigerian 419 scam. Had the message been sent plain-text, the SpamButcher anti-spam tool almost certainly deleted it. An email security blogger reported getting a similar 419 scam message a few weeks ago. As with other attachment-based spam, the remedy isn't obvious. Word Documents may be exchanged via email as or more often than PDF files are. Completely blocking Microsoft Word files is not an option. So far I've only seen one offending message, so we'll wait to see if the problem develops further before taking action.
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