Spammers are known for their willingness to try anything to get their email across to a potential client by any means possible.Their latest attempt known as Image Spamming has been very successful at doing just that.

This tactic involves a spammer attaching advertisements inside of a image files such has .gif or .jpg, which are almost impossible for conventional spam filters to detect. GMail is unable to detect this type of spam as well but thankfully for the people at metafilter a workable solution is found.

Since GMail is one of the email services widely used, a simple solution to filter out some of these advertisements can be utilized using the Create a Filter function.

Step 1:Login into your GMail account,then choose “Create a Filter” option

Step 2:Type “multipart/related.gif” (without the quotes) in the field that says [Has the Words]

Step 3:Simply check the field “Has Attachment”

Step 4:Click next and select “Delete It” to move the spam message automatically to the GMail Trash folder bypassing the Inbox.Alternatively you can create a folder such as “probebly spam” in your inbox and then select “Apply the Label” option which inturn would send the messages to that folder.This can be a effective measure since setting it to automatically send the messages to the trash bin will delete it within 30 days.

Note:This method is not at all perfect in its ability to filter out spam messages.It could possibly result in messages to be deleted that could be potentially important or even personal.You might want to check your trash bin or the labeled folder you are using.