I’ve also noticed the huge increase in image spam for stock scams. The solution to this seems pretty simple to me. Just block any email with an image in it.

Sure, a lot of people who like to flood their friends’ mailboxes with pictures of cute puppies will whine, but is this really a critical need for email? Much of the evil of spam is enabled by the bloat that emails have become in recent years, with HTML and embedded graphics (just one more bit of proof that Microsoft is evil).

Just say no, mail servers, and go back to ascii. And for users, if you want to show someone a picture, send them a link, or attach it.