[ale] Mystery Spam

Wed Nov 19 09:19:45 EST 2003

On Wed, 2003-11-19 at 08:30, Fletch wrote:
> >>>>> "Jeff" == Jeff Hubbs <hbbs at comcast.net> writes:
> 
>     Jeff> Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
> 
> It's base64 encoded (a method for encoding binary data that might have
> to pass through somewhere that's not able to handle arbitrary 8bit
> data).
> 
> 
>     Jeff> PGh0bWw+DQpUaGVzZSBhcmUgd2hhdCB0aGV5IGxvb2sgbGlrZSB0b2RheSA8YnI+DQp0aGV5IGFy
> 
> freebie:~ 401> perl -MMIME::Base64 -le 'print decode_base64( <> )' <<EOT
> heredoc> PGh0bWw+DQpUaGVzZSBhcmUgd2hhdCB0aGV5IGxvb2sgbGlrZSB0b2RheSA8YnI+DQp0aGV5IGFy
> heredoc> EOT
> <html>
> These are what they look like today <br>
> they ar

Dang, Perl looks like fun.

I guess where my confusion lies is this:  How did Evolution know to
perform the base64 decode for that text?  Does it (and other mail
clients, I'd presume) look for some sort of characteristic "smell" in
its message text?

- Jeff