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Phoenix Feathers is updated on Tuesday and Friday

I mentioned my spam filters last update. They're still working. What I use is called a whitelist - only certain emails are accepted into an incoming folder, the rest end up in 'spam', which I check fairly regularly for false negatives. Moonshadow does it differently; he uses a blacklist, filtering on certain phrases common in spam. Any emails containing the damning text are automatically deleted. He got a thoroughly evil email today that circumvents this kind of filtering. It looked like this:

From: Miguel Huber
Subject: Baby Boomers silver bullet anbbfbzx
Parts/Attachments:
   1.1 Shown ~14 lines Text
   2 10 KB Image
----------------------------------------
[IMAGE]

You received this email because you signed up at a GroupRX or partner website, or you signed up with a party that has contracted with GroupRX.
If you no longer wish to receive important health related information from us, please opt-out.

[ Part 2, Image/JPEG 13KB. ]
[ Cannot display this part. Press "V" then "S" to save in a file. ]


Now, at first glance, that looks quite easy to filter - deleting any email with the text 'GroupRX' would work. However, delving a little further into its guts showed this:

<html>
<body bgcolor=white>
<a href="http://cornish... (URL deleted)"> <IMG SRC="cid:drop_nice5.jpg" border=0></a>
<p><br><br><br><br>
<font face=Verdana size=1 color=lightgrey> You receiv<!-- denote -->ed this emai<!-- tiger -->l because you signed up at a Group<!-- terminus -->RX or par<!-- atone -->tner website, or you sig<!-- driscoll -->ned up with a party that has contr<!-- amber -->acted with GroupR<!-- diane -->X. If you no lon<!-- caloric -->ger wis<!-- admission -->h to receive impor<!-- icarus -->tant health related informa<!-- havilland -->tion from us, please <a href="http://calamitous.cost-stock.com/cleanlist">op<!-- implore -->t-ou<!-- cryptography -->t.</a><p>


All the words which might have been filtered on are broken up by meaningless html comments. Evil. Evil!

Speaking of evils, I started to make a costume last Friday. After a year and a half of going to cons, seeing the costumes and saying 'I'm going to make one', I actually began. If anyone's interested, there's a diary of sorts here (I haven't got very far yet). I don't think anyone is going to be sad enough to copy my techniques, such as they are, but if they do, they deserve all they get. This is the first time I've ever made a costume, and I haven't a clue what I'm doing. But for all that, it's quite fun.

Finally, speaking of getting round to things, I bullied Moonshadow into translating the last part of Chapter 6 of part 2 of The Boy and the Darkness. It shall be put up with all speed, once proofread. It is a very evil chapter, but in a very different sense of evil to the one above  ^.^

- Sun Kitten, 20th May '03


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