While looking at email today I came across someone’s idea of how to get around spam filters that don’t like URIs as text anchors in the body of a message where the link points to a different URI: make an image out of it and link to the image!

Is that a good idea? Well, it may not hurt but it’s still not a good idea.

First of all, your idea isn’t as original as you think it is. Back in 2006, lots of spammers got the idea of putting their messages into an image and mailing that. The response by some filter vendors was to incorporate some form of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) into their filter solutions.

Today, those solutions remain. Vendors using them include SpamTitan, Barracuda and Ironport, and there are even plugins for SpamAssassin called FuzzyOCR and OCRPlugin.

The bigger issue, of course, is whether it really is wise to use a technique that spammers use to get around content and security filters to, well, get around content and security filters?

The right answer is that you want your email to look as little like spam as possible and that generally means not using the techniques that spammers use.