Spam stalls OL2K/OE5/OE6: Javascript?

[Brendan LeFebvre]

Mentioned this in a reply to someone else, giving it its
own thread now too:

For the last few weeks we've had a particular breed of
SPAM that gums up the works, causing the behavior you
describe (i.e. looonng pause in the middle of download.)
I've never tried waiting an hour; so far we've given up
and killed Outlook after a few minutes.

Interestingly, the message sticks with Outlook 2000,
Outlook Express 5.5, and Outlook Express 6.

I've been able to get at the culprits by logging onto the
POP-serving machine and reading the mailbox through pine.
The messages that have been screwing us up all contain the
following unusual HTML, which I suspect is the cause:

img dynsrc=javascript:window.open
('http://82.146.50.41/ws/eBayISAPI.dll/ViewIte
m&item=3437053288&category=95963.html')

Anyone who can confirm that this is what's screwing us up,
and suggest a workaround?

 

[Brendan LeFebvre]

Followup clue: I forwarded one of the fatal spams to
another account on the same server. Lockup.

But then I forwarded it to an account on a different
server, and it came through!

So it's not the message content as such, but something in
the way it is being transmitted. Again, only certain
messages are doing this, and their pattern is such that we
originally suspected a new fatal SPAM going around.

BL

 

[Brendan LeFebvre]

I take back my earlier first reply which stated that the
message worked through a different POP server.

Turned out I had accidentally forwarded it text-only. When
I forwarded the whole message with HTML, the behavior
recurred.

BL