Email spammers are now using ASCII art to bypass traditional spam filters by hiding malicious content in plain sight.
A browser extension or email plugin that analyzes incoming messages for suspicious ASCII patterns could flag or quarantine these messages before they reach inboxes.
Security-conscious businesses would pay for this as part of their email security stack, especially those handling high volumes of email.
The MVP could be a simple pattern-matching tool that identifies known ASCII smuggling techniques.
The risk is that spammers will quickly evolve their methods, requiring constant updates to detection algorithms.