[Spambayes] Two Stage Plan

Gary Robinson grobinson at transpose.com
Tue Dec 17 20:21:11 EST 2002


Well, the whole key to the idea is that people would get behind it. Some
irrational cranks are always expected, of course, no matter how worthy an
idea is. The question is whether a LOT of people can get behind it.


--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


> From: "Piers Haken" <piersh@friskit.com>
> Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 16:44:37 -0800
> To: "Gary Robinson" <grobinson@transpose.com>, "Spamfilt"
> <spamfilt@archub.org>, "SpamBayes" <spambayes@python.org>
> Subject: RE: [Spambayes] Two Stage Plan
> 
> 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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>> 
> 




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