Fighting Spam with Python

[François Pinard]

[David MacQuigg]

> The key new features needed in a spam filter are the ability to
> extract the sender's identity (not that of the latest forwarder), and
> to factor into the spam score the reputation of that identity.

This will only work if your system is immune to forgeries, while being
largely widespread.

> In the flow we envision, the spam filter is the final process, used
> only on the 5% that is hard to classify.  80% will get an immediate
> reject.  15% will get an immediate accept without filtering, because
> the sender is authenticated and has a good reputation.  Eventually,
> all reputable senders will join the 15%, and the 5% will shrink to
> where we can ignore it.

It's fun to read statistics about a vision! :-)

> >You might find www.spambayes.org of interest, in several ways.

Spambayes is surprisingly good as it already stands.

-- 
François Pinard   http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca