spambayes rocks

[Donn Cave]

Quoth Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com>:
|
|     Milan> I've only clarified that solutions like spambayes help not only
|     Milan> us, but also spammers.
|
| For systems like SpamAssassin, where the database of spam/ham information is
| stored centrally, I agree.  Spammers "only" have to tweak their messages to
| thwart the contents of a single database.  With Spambayes and other similar
| systems, spammers have no access to the spam/ham information, as it's stored
| person-by-person.  If they are able to craft messages which are good enough
| to sneak by, I suspect it's quite possible they are selling something I
| might actually be interested in or know a hell of a lot about me.

You may have missed his original message.  The way I read it, and
I agree, the point is that spam filters are a band-aid that works
for the spammers by placating what would otherwise be vociferous
opponents that could cause real trouble for them.

We hard core computer users can all put in totally effective spam
filters, and there will still be millions getting the stuff.  For
all that we're going to bite on any of the spam, I'm sure the spammers
won't miss us anyway.  But meanwhile, we become not just indifferent
to the problem, worse we may have an investment in it as many of us
would rather have an ugly problem and a neat fix than just have no
particular problem to start with.  If we have clients, we like being
able to help them in such a noticeable way.

A real solution means going after these people and their support, and
shut them down.

|     Milan> In a longer term, we have to find much more efficient combat
|     Milan> methods against spammers.
|
| I assume by "efficient" you mean closer to 100% accuracy.

Or maybe he literally meant efficient.  The efficient place to stop
the flow is not at the destination.

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu