>Murph,
>
>        What is your posting about? I have had a couple of these on
>        various lists which we saved so I'm not surprised, but we
>        never tried to decode the image. Where did all this go on and
>        why would anyone waste their time using the internet? Are you
>        sure that you're not being had? Who would approve something
 
It puzzled me a bit, also -- to the best of my knowledge and belief, the
wanted poster was posted only to alt.horror, alt.msdos.programmers,
alt.pagan, and alt.necronomicon.  At least, those are the names at the
beginning of the message itself.
 
If this is not a hoax, then the police's only big mistake was appending the
image to the actual message rather than trying to set up an anonymous ftp
site (and monitoring who asked for it -- in case the perpetrator himself
did).  Based on what the message said, the man for whom they are looking
posted to Usenet -- which makes that as good a place as any to start
trawling for clues.
 
It shows a certain amount of naivete vis a vis the Net to assume that
everyone has access to the proper decoder or that their Usenet feed (direct
or via gopher) can handle binary files.
 
Sending huge binary files out to mailing lists is simply not cool, though,
and I, for one, even could my mailer (or Usenet feed) handle binaries,
would hesitate to use any binary file thus received, in the first place ...
 
Even so, "Keystone cops" is not the term I would use for these people,
assuming, again, the post was legit.
 
>        were flames. -- Paul.
 
Mario Rups
co-listowner, ARCANA