OT: spam filtering idea

[Michael Hudson]

-$P-W$- at verence.demon.co.uk (Paul Wright) writes:

> That said, the obvious spammer
> response when people do that is to make messages which are more and more
> dissimilar for each recipient, again something where human malice can
> probably defeat automated attempts to find similar messages.

Two points spring to mind:

1) having to modify the message for each recipient makes the spammer's
   job harder -- a good thing.

2) the extreme so-unlikely-it's-never-going-to-happen extension of
   this line is that people only send me marketing material *I'm
   actually interested in* -- which would also be a good thing.

> The DCC's creator has said that he thinks that it will eventually be
> most useful against "mainsleaze", that is, spam from big businesses
> who will not want to use the sort of filter-evading tactics which
> are popular with the "enlarge your naked cheerleaders"[1] crowd.

A reflection of this fact is that spammers are clearly testing their
mails against SpamAssassin, whereas some mailshots I get, and want to
get, (the Apple Developer Connection News being a striking example)
frequently get flagged by SA as spam.

I'd install spambayes, but the starship is so thoroughly & viciously
protected *anyway* that I only get a tiny amount of spam as it is...

Cheers,
M.

-- 
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