Spam Trap Claims 10x-100x Accuracy Gain 419
SpiritGod21 writes in with a NYTimes article on a new approach to spam detection that claims out-of-the-box improvement of 1 or 2 orders of magnitude over existing approaches. The article wanders off into human-interest territory as the inventor, Steven T. Kirsch, has an incurable disease and an engineer's approach to fighting it. But a description of the anti-spam tech, based on the reputation of the receiver and not the sender, is worth a read.
The solution to spam (Score:3, Funny)
2) Behead those who insult Islam!
3) No more spam. Allah Akbar
Form letter (Score:5, Funny)
Your post advocates a
(X) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(X) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
(X) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(X) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(X) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(X) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
(X) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
(X) Blacklists suck
(X) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
(X) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
(X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
Re:Is linux for homos? (Score:3, Funny)
"Anonymous Coward" --> A Condom Warns You
Re:Yet another wrong answer... (Score:2, Funny)
Easier said than done. First start with a legal definition of spam e-mail, that does not cover things like mailing lists. Personally I am sending out many mass mailings, on an opt-out basis (I harvest interesting mail addresses myself) - and get very few opt-outs and many reactions. I specifically send mails to people that may be interested in buying my goods. This should definitely be legal, it's a great marketing tool and helps my business very well.
What should be illegal (and I suspect is already) are the attempts at identity theft, selling prescription drugs (real or fake), selling fake brand products, etc. Sellers of this kind of products should be tackled by the police first, and secondly those helping them in their marketing - most notably e-mail spammers. That is at least partly where the real solution lies.
Re:Yet another wrong answer... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Simple way to Do That (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yet another wrong answer... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yet another wrong answer... (Score:3, Funny)
No, if you are harvesting email addresses and sending unsolicited commercial messages to them, it is quite simple:
You are a spammer.
Most e-mail addresses I get are from business cards and from websites where people post their e-mail with the specific purpose to get offers of the product that I have. Some I get from other sources, but again this is from sources where the e-mail addresses are posted with the specific intent of receiving these offers.
So it is not as black-and-white as most people here try to put it. I have a mailing list containing maybe 500 addresses or so, and get on average 10-20 reactions on the offers sent, and 50-100 or so total reply regularly on the various offers. That is what I call a targeted list. Even though not everyone opted in, some actually did.
Re:Yet another wrong answer... (Score:3, Funny)
No, I ask them specifically to reply. Or call me - telephone number is in the mails that I send. As is my real, verifiable company name.
Which, like most people here also don't get because they can not READ and are completely pre-determined that any commercial mail == spam, is the case. E-mails are not sent out randomly, but only to addresses where there is a reasonable and real chance they are in the same business.
Re:Generalization of honeypots (Score:3, Funny)
Re:You are also totally wrong (Score:5, Funny)
In summary, I have no idea what I'm talking about because I didn't RTFA. That I am aware of this fact makes me superior to the lot of you who are arguing over the inner workings of this week's spam-filter vaportech -- which was probably written up in an incomprehensible and inconsistent manner such that it will go over the heads of foolish investors, and part them from their money.