Has Microsoft 'Solved' Spam? 337
MsWillow writes to tell us the Seattle PI is running a story looking back at Bill Gates promise to have the spam problem "solved" in two years. Well, it looks like time is up, and the verdict is -- an emphatic "maybe". From the article: "Microsoft says it sees things differently. To "solve" the problem for consumers in the short run doesn't require eliminating spam entirely, said Ryan Hamlin, the general manager who oversees the company's anti-spam programs. Rather, he said, the idea is to contain it to the point that its impact on in-boxes is minor. In that way, Hamlin said, Gates' prediction has come true for people using the right tactics and advanced filtering technology."
A Plan for Spam (Score:5, Informative)
Probably just deferred the responsibility to one of his underlings. Aside from that, he talks about crazy methods such as deciding how much money the sender has to pay you before you open the e-mail [cbsnews.com].
Gates has plenty [microsoft.com] of articles [microsoft.com] which detail how much he hates spam. Anyone can sit down and write this, but Gates gets the high exposure interviews with the Wall Street Journal and the AP.
Gates is all talk. If you want to read some articles from some very interesting people, check out A Plan for Spam [paulgraham.com] by Paul Graham. It talks about simple ways to write Bayesian spam filters and does a very good job at describing how they work. Another valuable member of the anti-spam community is Jonathon Zdziarski [nuclearelephant.com] who has written many books about how to actually get rid of spam. You can also read the Slashdot interview [slashdot.org] with him.
Re:Same way they solved Virii (Score:1, Informative)
Paul Graham (Score:3, Informative)
Paul Graham has a famous essay, A Plan For Spam: http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html [paulgraham.com]
Re:My Hotmail Inbox (Score:1, Informative)
If efficient filters were what it was to "solve" spam, than Google has come pretty close.
-TCM
Re:In short... (Score:2, Informative)
Outlook 2003's spam filter has solved it for me (Score:3, Informative)
Don't knock MS on spam until you see Outlook 2003's spam filter. The question becomes if they have the technology that they do in Outlook then why can't the incorporate it into hotmail as well? I would ask the same question about Exchange but I guess they figure most people using an Exchange server are doing it with Outlook.
Re:Same way they solved Virii (Score:3, Informative)
Should be viri if we were speaking Latin.
No, "virus" is not of male gender like "dominus", but neuter like "domus". Therefore, the correct plural should be "virus", with a long "u". But I only barely survived my latin lessons, so I would not count on it.
What happened to the "math equation" solution? (Score:3, Informative)
I thought Gates' solution was to have SMTP senders solve a simple math equation from each mail item they wished to post to a server, thus causing spammers a massive slowdown.
To the best of my knowledge this solution is not in practice and Microsoft is using Bayesian filtering which way predates Bill's promise.
Re:A Plan for Spam (Score:0, Informative)
Re:Well as a computer engineer (Score:5, Informative)
You're a computer engineer and you don't know about the "In-Reply-To" smtp header?
I don't know whether I'm being Informative or Flamebait here...
Justin.
Re:Well as a computer engineer (Score:5, Informative)
Using the In-Reply-To: header flag, perhaps? It uses the unique Message-Id. That's how threading works (in good MUAs - Thunderbird has it's own very very strange message threading). Save the message-id for outgoing e-mails, for each user. When a message is received, match the In-Reply-To header against the list of Message-Ids. If it's there, whitelist.
Easy.
Impact on in-boxes is minor - Other solutions (Score:3, Informative)
Any program that can make the impact minimal is IMHO - as the article says - the ojbective. I can deal with some junk mail, I just don't want to spend any significant time cleaning it all up. What pobox.com does not get, gmail usually picks it up and places it in my spam folder. Nice. If Microsoft can do this then I think they are on the right track.
Re:Same way they solved Virii (Score:3, Informative)
Champing! Champing at the bit! God, that drives me insane when people say "chomping". Not only is "chomping" wrong, it's also sounds stupid.
Champing [m-w.com]
It's almost as bad as that non-sensical word: irregardless.
Re:Well as a computer engineer (Score:3, Informative)
Is anonymous email spam? (Score:2, Informative)
May be a bit off topic but I have an anonymous email site - is this considered spam? The recipient didn't ask for the email so I guess it is. If this is the case then should these kind of sites be illegal too? Then what about e-card sites?
Did a quick google on definition of spam and got this:
To indiscriminately send unsolicited, unwanted, irrelevant, or inappropriate messages, especially commercial advertising in mass quantities. Noun: electronic "junk mail".
Re:Same way they solved Virii (Score:3, Informative)
To quote the wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: viri and virii are virtually unknown in edited prose, and no major dictionary recognizes them as alternative forms... The virii form would not have been a correct plural, since the -ii ending only occurs in the plural of words ending in -ius. For instance, take radius, plural radii: the root is radi-, with the singular ending -us and the plural -i. Thus the plural virii is that of the nonexistent word virius. The viri form is also incorrect in Latin. The ending -i is used only for masculine nouns, not neuter ones such as virus; moreover, viri (albeit with a short i in the first syllable) is the plural of vir, and means "men".
Really only people who don't know much about malware, or who don't have a very good grasp on the english language will be seen using the incorrect viri or virii.
I know you were making a point, and it's a good one... I just wanted to make sure he understands that neither viri nor virii are any kind of correct variant of the word virus.
The correct form is definitely: viruses.
K9 spam blocker rules (Score:3, Informative)
If you haven't tried K9, and you aren't happy with your current spam solution, give it a try...
Sender Policy Framework (Score:3, Informative)
If the email have a faked sender address it can be bounced or labeled suspicious.
This works amazingly well, and stops all faked sender emails before it's accepted in the server. Effectivly blocking virus and spam sent with forged addresses. Non exsisting domains are allready blocked in the mail servers so if everyone owning a domain was to implement [openspf.org] this. It would make me a very happy person. Ofcouse spammers can still send email from domains under their own control, but those go into online blacklists [google.com] fairly quickly
Unfortunatly it does not have the widest accept yet, but growing all the time. After hotmail implemented it in their DNS records, spam is at an all time low around here. Not getting a single spam email from faked hotmail addresses in ages.
And only 6 months ago I had a dedicated "sent from hotmail" folder since it was 99% likly to be spam anyway...
sepski
Re:Same way they solved Virii (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Same way they solved Virii (Score:2, Informative)