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Human-Powered Spam Filtering 343
arturs writes "A company called eProvisia
started an unusal business: they filter out spam not by using complicated algorithms, but human beings... It costs around $20/year - is the war against spam over?" It's an interesting idea - the privacy concerns are big of course, but how would this stack up to, say SpamAssassin or a suite like Barracuda's Spam firewall. We tested the Barracuda device - great integration of OSS software, with a nice interface. Update: 09/20 15:12 GMT by J : Corrected price of Spam Eradicator.
Buzzword Bingo (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:2)
Best of breed especially makes my stomach turn. The images it conjures are a mix of evily grinning eugeneticists and the stinky poop smell of a dog show.
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:5, Insightful)
I just wonder if Hemos knew that when he posted it...
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:5, Funny)
synergy! (Score:5, Funny)
I was waiting for synergy to pop up there somewhere...
What's a mission statement, About Us page, or memo from management without synergy?!?
Re:synergy! (Score:4, Informative)
"I produce synergy. And books on how to cheat at Bridge."
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:2)
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:3, Interesting)
And yet those are exactly the words that HR departments are looking for on resumes. As long as you can use stupid words that really don't work in any other situation you can get your foot in the door.
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:2)
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:5, Insightful)
personally i just think though that they use some filters to help..
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:5, Funny)
The calculation of BSD is simple. Its domain is the set of all strings. The range is all real numbers from 0.0 - 1.0. To calculate BSD(s) for string s, simply take the length of s (call this l). Then, divide the number of of characters that contribute to the actual, non-bullshit content of the string by l. This is the value of BSD(s).
To give a pertinent example, it is plainly apparent that BSD('Leveraging our paradigm-shifting product line with state of the art technology developed by a dedicated team of professionals, we offer a significant competitive advantage on the diversified but fragmented market of best of breed anti-spam solutions.') = 0.0.
It is my hope that this will leverage the ever-expanding work of linguistics researchers around the world in utilizing paradigm-shifting methods for significantly empowering their abilities to detect bullshit.
Great Idea (Score:2)
Re:Carl Sagan beat you to it... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:5, Informative)
Funny i know, but actually such an app actually exists
Deloitte & Touche's Bullfighter [deloitte.com]
BullfighterTM is software that runs in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, within Microsoft Windows 2000 or XP. It works a lot like the spelling and grammar checker in those applications, but focuses on jargon and readability.
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:5, Funny)
The minute your mail starts flowing, a dedicated team of over a hundred trained Screening and Preselection Specialists, working 24 hours a day**
** - Timezone differences may apply.
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:2, Informative)
It gets better... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:5, Informative)
Conveniently located in the heart of Palmyra Atoll, eProvisia LLC is the leading provider of reliable, robust, powerful and cost-efficient spam filtering solutions for world-class corporations and individual users.
Privately funded in 1993, now with customers in 40 countries* and over $67 million** in cash reserves, ....
* - Not all currently recognized by UN. ** - Palmyra Atoll dollars.
Palmyra Atoll is uninhabited, and doesn't have a currency. The phone number is invalid (nowhere has a +78 extension), and what kind of place lists in its address "Islet 7, 5 52 N 162 06 W"?
I wouldn't have bothered posting this except it seems like both slashdot and most of the people reading this seem to be taking it seriously. It's not.
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:5, Informative)
Terms of Service and Legal Disclaimer
By viewing pages or using products and services of eProvisia LCC, you acknowledge and consent to the following terms and conditions:
(1) Warranties and waivers. You understand that there are no guarantees, either expressed or implied, regarding the accuracy, confidentiality or availability of the service. eProvisia LCC may choose to share any information acquired in the course of providing its services with other entities, and may, at its sole discretion and based on this information, take whichever actions the company, its affiliates, subsidiaries, or representatives, consider to be appropriate. You henceforth void your reasonable expectation of privacy, and your constitutional rights to a fair and speedy trial.
(2) Indemnification. You agree to hold harmless and indemnify eProvisia LCC and its affiliates, subsidiaries, and representatives, from and against any legal claims, including liability for the company not adhering to the terms and conditions of this agreement.
(3) Choice of Law and Jurisdiction. These Terms of Use will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of Uninhabited Sovereign Territory of Palmyra Atoll, without giving effect to its conflict of laws and provisions of your actual state or country of residence. Any claims, legal proceedings, or litigations regarding eProvisia LCC and its affiliates, subsidiaries, and representatives, will be brought solely in and you consent to the jurisdiction of Palmyra Atoll courts.
Re:Buzzword Bingo (Score:3, Informative)
It was obviously designed to do that; it's a joke. And if you look up the location of their company, it's basically Gilligan's Island: an uninhabited (except for 20 Fish and Wildlife Service staff) atoll 1000 miles south of Hawaii.
How about wiki spam (Score:4, Insightful)
I thoroughly enjoy wikpedia and I have always thought of new ways of using the wiki concept - here is one solution to spam without privacy concerns.
Your email interface would look at a list on the wiki page and filter out any known spam. One spam slips through and you can make a new entry at wik (like database or text page whatever). The entry could be the whole email or an algorithm but either way an algorithm would eventually be made based on a pattern to reduce the entry size (who knows the community is in control of it). Fixed the privacy concerns unless you did it to yourself.
The next great thing about the wiki is you could take that 20 bucks a month and make a donation to the wiki. Not only would you be helping thwart spam but also supporting a great dictionary, encyclopedia and all things great with the open concept.
Re:How about wiki spam (Score:5, Informative)
Already baked [halfbakery.com]: it's called Vipul's Razor [sourceforge.net].
Re:How about wiki spam (Score:2)
Cloudmark has an implementation for Windows, I'm a long time subscriber that gets about 400 less messages a day because of the product.
The only real problem is the jokers who submit mailing lists as spam because they are too thick headed to separate "mail I don't want to read" from actual spam. However, its a minor problem.
Re:How about wiki spam (Score:2)
Just put your list filters ahead of your spam filters.
Re:How about wiki spam (Score:4, Insightful)
And what's stopping a spam ring from going back to it and deleting it?
Don't forget that *authoritative* is still a grey area for wiki concepts.
With a personal touch (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder if they ever verify their decisions with you:
Mark,
This is Eric, your spam d00d. You got a message about fisting, you into that? Let me know, thanks!
-- Eric
Re:With a personal touch (Score:5, Funny)
Now here's a job... (Score:2, Funny)
Party like its... (Score:5, Informative)
Four pages, home, the product, terms of service, and about the company. The only thing they are missing is bios of the 'management team'. Even better the $67 million dollars in cash reserves are in Palmyra Atoll dollars; I wonder what the exchange rate is?
Overall, it looks like someone stole a 'dot com' idea from 1999. Anyone have a little red Corvette?
I'll stick with Spamassassin, Thunderbird.
LLC Companies (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, LLC's are the smart way to do a partnership. In a partnership, all principles enjoy equal responsibility for mishaps. In LLC's, all principles enjoy shared responsibility.
I guess the best way to sum it up would be to quote my Business Legal Environment professor: "...and I hope that now you all have a clear understanding of partnerships. Now let me give you a word of advice, never form one."
Re:LLC Companies (Score:2)
I'd never form a partnership.
N.
Re:Party like its... (Score:2)
Some info [cia.gov] about Palmyra Atoll.
Palmyra Atoll dollars (Score:5, Funny)
One Palmyra Atoll dollar = 17 pieces of mithril, or approximately twenty kilograms of fairy dust.
There's no such thing, people. This is a joke.
Re:Party like its... (Score:5, Funny)
This is thge odd part. How can an uninhabited territory be sovereign. According to the CIA Factbook [cia.gov] it is a National Wildlife Refuge managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Also, it says it has no economic activity. What the heck would back Palmyra Atoll's dollar?
Re:Party like its... (Score:2)
It doesn't really provide you with a better tax situation, but it does keep people from suing you and taking your personal belongings. They can only sue the LLC. It also forces you to define a few fuzzy variables that most business start out with (who owns what, etc.)
Re:Party like its... (Score:2)
No, I didn't, but it doesn't suprise me, LLC is a very useful legal entity, in particular for corporations which want to band together in a business venture with other corporations. It basicly 'firewalls' parent corporations from the (shareholder and debt) liability of subsidiaries. Cingular doesn't adverties that they are a LLC, but if you sue them, then you'll know.
Re:Party like its... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Party like its... (Score:3, Informative)
The LLC complaint was a minor issue, mostly based on personal observations, it's amazing how many people are willing to jump on me about *
ideas? (Score:2)
You would only have to classify each message once by a person... and then have all messages like that blocked. Very sweet. Very India?
I am not sure I want somebody reading through all my email though...
You've been beaten to it! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:ideas? (Score:3, Funny)
They'd better not be applying for a patent.
Won't work (Score:2, Interesting)
Yay (Score:2)
Re:Yay (Score:2, Interesting)
My job is focused around looking at data to find problems. Many companies by high cost and very fancy data verification tools, address cassing software etc... Then they run these things on automatic on all of there data. What happens is that there data slowly becomes unreliable over time because they are paying their data entry a pittiance or are simply outsourceing it to a foreign nation who has people who do not speak the language, as much as
RE: Barracuda (Score:3, Informative)
I'm working on mimicking the barracuda's functionality, and have the spam quarantine working.
I apologize that sourceforge is showing no releases, the files ARE in cvs, and are stable after much testing. I'll try to get in and do a release later today.
My hope is to build a full spam firewall suite that is easy to set up and still have much scalability and control.
Re: Barracuda (Score:2)
Please use the files in cvs. Kthx!
It's yearly, not monthly (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, I don't know if I see the benefit of paying someone else to read my email. They even offer more expensive packages to have them categorize and summarize your mail for you, as well as discard non-spam mails that you don't want anyway. I suppose it could be useful for really busy executive types, but then can't they afford secretaries anyway?
Re: (Score:2)
God that's good (Score:2)
I might see if I can sell the enterprise on this, because we have people complaining because we don't use site-wide bayes because some people might want mail that other people don't want.
Chris
Nice Idea (Score:2)
Whenever you get spam let through, ask people to forward a copy to you so that you can add it to the list, and so you can sign up from the details on the email.
The only problem is, this is shooting themselves in the foot, if they eliminate all spam, spammers can't make money, no more spam, no more
Spam won't be gone until... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure who's worse anymore, the companies out there who sell services to 'help' you reduce/eliminate spam, or the spammers. (Maybe one in the same, in some instances)..
The only resolution I see to spam is good, solid legislation THAT IS ENFORCED. Country harbors spammers, cut them off from the US internet. Spammers AND the companies that hire them BOTH held equally liable. If it's a criminal act to spam, it's a criminal act to hire someone to spam.
People can write programs all day to try and stop spam, it won't matter. If someone can write a program to filter x out, someone else will find a way to get y through. It's an endless cycle.
Spam is like a virus in so many ways...
Re:Spam won't be gone until... (Score:2)
The only workable solution I see is e-stamps of some kind. In other words, senders have to pay a small fee. Then mass mailings will no longer be profitable and should drop to a trickle.
ISP's would get part of the stamp's value so that they have a financial incentive to enforce the postage. There is nothing that motivates better than greed.
Re:Spam won't be gone until... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe spam is also like drugs in a couple ways. They both cause a bunch of problems, and the gross majority would like to limit/get rid of them, but there's also I section of the population that's hooked. So the question becomes, how do you get rid of something so popular?
We've seen what's happened with drugs. You outlaw the sale, and people sell it illegally. You outlaw the import o
$20 a month? (Score:2)
At first, I thought that too cheap to be true. However, let's do the math. I receive c. 200 spams a day. That's 6000 per month. I think I could hand-filter that many spams within an hour, so that gives a rate of $20/hour -- which isn't bargain basement, but still pretty reasonable.
The problem comes, of course, in whether they can hand-filter my inbox with the same speed and accuracy as me. 99 times out of 100, I don't even need to open an email to see if its spam -- I know what emails I'm expecting to rec
Re:$20 a month? (Score:2)
On top of that, it's $20/year, not $20/month.
Yeah, when I posted it was quoted as $20/month; that's now been corrected to $20/year. Which seems impossibly low given the number of spams they would have to filter.
Having RTFA... (Score:2, Insightful)
...that site *must* be a spoof. All the disclaimers and address in Palmyra Atoll is so dodgy.
Besides, I used to live out that way (Kiribati, in the early 1970s, then called the Gilbert Islands), and I don't recall hearing about these guys! Oh, wait, 1993...
Re:Having RTFA... (Score:2)
Especially since Palmyra Atoll [wikipedia.org] is "uninhabited" with "no economic activity," and "managed as a nature reserve."
Re:Having RTFA... (Score:2, Funny)
Business model? (Score:5, Interesting)
$20 per month / 720 hours = about 3 cents an hour.
Since they say they begin "manually reviewing, hand-picking and approving important correspondence", how does this work? To pay someone $6/hour, they'd need to be reviewing at least 200 mailboxes simultaneously. My confidence level of their accuracy under these circumstances would be considerably -lower- than a software solution.
Re:Business model? (Score:2)
Re:Business model? (Score:3, Insightful)
$20 per month / 720 hours = about 3 cents an hour.
No, because remember they have more than one customer, and it's not a ratio of one employee to one customer. One employee can probably service dozens and dozens of users, especially if you're prescreening email with SpamAssassin. When I start work in the morning, I can clear out the night's junk mail (after SpamAssassin's leftovers) in a matter of seconds.
I'd be more interesting in seeing the lag time betw
Re:Not as hard as you might think... (Score:2)
But it seems like this idea is broken if they let people say "I'll take commercial mail about subject X", and if they don't, how's it personal?
hilarious (Score:5, Interesting)
Im going to include their footnotes on that pge in parentheses and bold.
Privately funded in 1993, now with customers in 40 countries(Not all currently recognized by UN) and over $67 million(Palmyra Atoll dollars) in cash reserves, the company experienced a phenomenal growth
Re:hilarious (Score:5, Funny)
Spamassassin works great (Score:3, Interesting)
It is by spam alone I set my mind in motion (Score:5, Funny)
Its a joke ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Some juicy tidbits on eProvisia (Score:3, Insightful)
"For the first time ever: 100% reliability in combating spam. Guaranteed."
But the first two bullet points of their TOS also read:
"You understand that there are no guarantees, either expressed or implied, regarding the accuracy, confidentiality or availability of the service."
AND
"You agree to hold harmless and indemnify eProvisia LCC and its affiliates, subsidiaries, and representatives, from and against any legal claims, including liability for the company no
Re:Its a joke ... (Score:2, Insightful)
I can vouch for... (Score:2)
At home I use ASSP as it's pretty simple to set up sompared to Spam Assassin.
Re:I can vouch for... (Score:2)
isn't this similar to what gmail does? (Score:2, Interesting)
this has to be a joke (Score:5, Informative)
Palmyra Atoll is a thousand miles south of Hawaii, an untold distance from civilization. Uninhabited by humans and wild to the core, it is the last intact marine wilderness in the U.S. tropics.
additionally, (Score:2)
GMail outcry (Score:2, Interesting)
Sweatshops (Score:2)
I'd be a bit suspicious (Score:2, Interesting)
Errors (Score:2)
Besides, machines are faster. Big John be damned.
Hmmmm. (Score:2, Funny)
"** - Timezone differences may apply."
Damn. I was all excited about the fact that they worked 24 hours a day, but I live on the west coast.
Filtering using spelling checker... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Filtering using spelling checker... (Score:4, Funny)
OMG tht is sooo cool!!!1 rlly? no way!!
I had an epiphany yesterday (Score:2, Insightful)
Guaranteed? (Score:5, Interesting)
Baraccuda (Score:2)
Snaremail.com (Score:2)
I recently started a service for spam filtering. The idea was to combine several types of filtering as well as allowing a given user to create their own rules. Between whitelisting your uploaded address book, effective use of Spamassassin, Vipul's Razor, (careful use of) the RBL, we also create human made global rules to reject certain types of spam that slip through.
The real draw of the service is that people can use it on an existing email address, by providing P
Many Solutions Already (indirectly) Human-Powered (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd say the system works pretty well. My Yahoo account, which was unusable after being harvested from my Usenet postings, is usable again. I just checked, and I have 426 messages in my bulk (spam) folder and 9 in my inbox. Of the nine, half (ok, 4!) are auto-responses from mail daemons to messages I never sent, while the other half are spam that escaped the filters. Not bad at all for a few days' worth of mail.
I think a sensible business model is for the webmail services to leverage their huge, continually updated, spam database and license them to ISPs, who can then filter spam at the server level before users download anything. I think that's much more elegant than software+community based solutions implemented at the user level.
It's a joke. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a great joke, and once more Slashdot's been had.
-Rabin
There's a dupe site (Score:5, Informative)
This site is a joke, and no more represents an actual business than that other famous site with a
Slashdot has been trolled, kthanxbye (Score:5, Informative)
Anybody read their terms of service? You understand that there are no guarantees, either expressed or implied, regarding the accuracy, confidentiality or availability of the service. eProvisia LCC may choose to share any information acquired in the course of providing its services with other entities, and may, at its sole discretion and based on this information, take whichever actions the company, its affiliates, subsidiaries, or representatives, consider to be appropriate. You henceforth void your reasonable expectation of privacy, and your constitutional rights to a fair and speedy trial.
And their contact information. Um, Palmyra Atoll is an uninhabited pile of sand in the Pacific Ocean. "Palmyra Atoll dollars?" BWAHAHAHA.
Leveraging our paradigm-shifting product line with state of the art technology developed by a dedicated team of professionals, we offer a significant competitive advantage on the diversified but fragmented market of best of breed anti-spam solutions. That line sounds like it was generated with the Web Economy Bullshit Generator [dack.com].
Thanks for the laugh, Hemos. No, I'm laughing at you, not with you.
Clever Ad for Barracuda (Score:3, Interesting)
I considered starting such a business... (Score:4, Interesting)
I immediately realised such a business would never thrive, because:
Yes, it's a hoax. Which could be immediately deduced from the fact that it is not viable business (especially with the price they quote).