Sorry Ace - that's exactly what I was saying about the photos - with Outlook 2003 or Outlook Express you can choose to view your emails with images turned off (unless from a trusted source) and Outlook 2003 will filter them too (as you described). Thus, the sender gets no feedback and you're deleted from his/her database eventually. Until I realised the images trick I was getting swamped - now it's slowly fading away.
See [THIS]
R2