Re: spam mails using image/gif in multipart/alternative

[Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka@jpl.org>]

>>>>> In <v9zmnave9s.fsf@marauder.physik.uni-ulm.de> Reiner Steib wrote:

> I've used the following up to now:

> (setq
>  mm-discouraged-alternatives
>  '("text/html" "text/richtext" "text/enriched" "multipart/related")
>  mm-automatic-display (remove "text/html" mm-automatic-display)
>  gnus-buttonized-mime-types '(".*/signed"))

> I newer saw legitimate preferred image/.* parts in
> multipart/alternative, but I hesitate to make such change based on my
> usage only.  If everyone agrees with this, we could change the
> default.  (Only in the trunk or in v5-10 too?  Is it a bug that Gnus
> displays image/* spam?)  Opinions?

I don't know how a multipart/alternative mail of which the second
part is an image is useful (they are often pictures of pills ;-).
There might be mailers which display both of two parts.  (Gnus
may have to do so if content types of two parts are different,
e.g., one is text/*, the other is image/*.)

At any rate, I think making it default to (image/.*) is commonly
useful because most of such mails are spam and it is not worth
seeing such images.

>> My setting is:
>>
>> (setq gnus-buttonized-mime-types
>>       '("multipart/alternative" "multipart/signed")
>>       mm-discouraged-alternatives
>>       '("image/.+"))

> Interesting idea!  It allows to pick the alternative (text, html, gif)
> an displays the plain/text at first:

> ,----
>| 1.  (*) multipart/alternative  ( ) image/gif
>|
>| 2.  (*) text/plain          ( ) text/html
> `----

> Could you please add this suggestion as an example to the manual?

I'll do it next week.

> (Maybe we write "/.*" instead of "/.+" as in other places; the
> difference might confuse newbies.  Or we could change everything to
> "/.+" which is slightly more exact.)

I'll also use `.*' since the differences aren't significant.