[Spambayes] Two Stage Plan
Piers Haken
piersh at friskit.com
Tue Dec 17 16:44:37 EST 2002
Sounds like a disater to me. I hope that spambayes will have an option
to completely ignore ANY instance of this URL in ALL messages.
<font color=white>
http://wecanstopspam.org
</font>
<slaps-head />
Piers.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gary Robinson [mailto:grobinson@transpose.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 1:23 PM
> To: Spamfilt; SpamBayes
> Subject: [Spambayes] Two Stage Plan
>
>
> I want to suggest a two-stage plan to solve the spam problem.
> I'm not sure if it makes sense, but it's interesting enough
> to me that I decided to share it to see what other people think.
>
> FIRST STAGE
>
> Many of you are aware of the http://wecanstopspam.org idea, whereby:
>
> --If a lot of real people use it in the sigs of real emails,
> spam filters will get trained to see it as a very strong
> indicator of being legitimate. Thus, it will have become a
> sort of "virtual whitelist". I see this as being able to
> counteract, to some extent, the fact that spammers will be
> trying to use words with no very spammy associations.
> Instead, this technique puts the stress on "hammy" words, in
> particular this very hammy indicator.
>
> --If the URL does become widely used and is accepted by
> filters, of course spammers will want to include it too. But
> at that point, it will be popular enough that filter authors
> will be motivated to make sure that only visible, clickable
> versions of the URL are given a high hamminess value. So
> spammers would have to, in effect, advertise the
> wecanstopspam.org website and provide a convenient link.
>
> --The URL would contain information about how to combat spam,
> as it does now, but hopefully much better written and
> presented, as the site evolves under community guidance. So
> spammers that include it will be helping their targets to fight spam.
>
> SECOND STAGE
>
> The problem with all possibly foolproof anti-spam approaches,
> such as the pay-to-spam approach, or the camram one
> (http://www.camram.org/), is that there is a huge
> chicken-or-egg problem. The world really has to settle on one
> solution and get a real critical mass of users in order for
> it to work.
>
> Now, if in fact it gets to the point that spammers are
> sending the http://wecanstopspam.org URL to millions of users
> a day (or even if it doesn't, but millions of individuals are
> using it because the virtual whitelist aspect), then there
> will be enormous power associated with the wecanstopspam.org site.
>
> That is, that site may then, all by itself, have the power to
> determine what the world standard solution is by announcing
> it on the site. What will it be? That would be determined by
> some sort of community process. Maybe online voting, or maybe
> a conference where people would discuss and finally vote on
> the solution.
>
> CONCLUSION
>
> If:
>
> --A compelling enough meme could be crafted that people would
> want to include the URL in their sigs so that it would spread
> in a p2p viral fashion, and
>
> --It is in fact possible for filters to only give credit to
> the token when it is visible and clickable,
>
> then it seems to me that this could serve as a realistic
> means for solving the chicken-and-egg problem, thereby
> creating a single dominant standard with enough critical mass
> to actually work.
>
> The basis for it is that it avoids the chicken-or-egg problem
> in the first stage by leveraging existing spam technology. It
> can do that because the substrate is already in place for the
> idea to get to critical mass, in the form of existing
> adaptive spam filters such as Graham's. Then when it gets to
> critical mass, spammers will want to co-opt the token, except
> that in the act of doing that they give the wecanstopspam,org
> site enough power to enable the world to agree on a foolproof
> solution.
>
> Now, I realize the above may be crazy since I haven't thought
> about it for that long. But I just thought it was perhaps
> interesting enough to be worth sharing.
>
> Feedback?
>
>
> --Gary
>
>
> --
> Help your email get through while making life harder for
> spammers: use http://wecanstopspam.org in your sig.
>
> Gary Robinson
> CEO
> Transpose, LLC
> grobinson@transpose.com
> 207-942-3463
> http://www.transpose.com
> http://radio.weblogs.com/0101454
>
>
> >
>
>
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