K'NEK-TEK

A webpage to document and share my open-source software/hardware projects.

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Clever spammers

I was looking through the spam folder in my inbox (it’s always good for a laugh) and noticed that some clever spammer had figured out how to break the tables inside of Gmail’s sender information card:

 

Overunning the line break

Overrunning the line break

 

Normally the sender’s information card that pops up if you hover over it looks like this:

Normal email address display, without breaking lines.

Normal email address display, without breaking lines

The spam in question was trying to look like it came from McDonald’s regarding a survey for the fast-food giant. Since the part in the email after the @ was hidden in some views by being so long that it broke formatting, it let them look marginally more legit. Sneaky!

Name of author

Name: Erik