spam classification breaker

Erik Max Francis max at alcyone.com
Thu Feb 5 22:08:03 EST 2004


Tim Peters wrote:

> I have to deduce *your* magic words, not mine.  I have to send email
> to you,
> and deduce what you did and didn't look at.  This is an expensive
> process
> for the spammer, of course.

Which defeats the whole economic basis for spamming.  Spammers spam
because it is exceptionally cheap for them to do it in bulk.  When they
buy lists, they don't care if significant numbers of the addresses are
invalid; who cares, they're sending them to a million people anyway.

Careful attention to get an individual message through to _one_ person
by means of carefully adjusting the contents of the messages to tell
when it got through (how you'd know is another question, since most
filtering systems drop the spam message on the floor rather than
bouncing it outright).  It simply isn't worth the spammers time and
effort to pay so much attention to an individual target.

The economics of spam itself mean that if you have a competent,
well-trained filter in operation, you really don't have to worry about
this kind of attack.

-- 
 __ Erik Max Francis && max at alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
/  \ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && &tSftDotIotE
\__/ Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
    -- H.G. Wells



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