[Spambayes] Two Stage Plan

Gary Robinson grobinson at transpose.com
Tue Dec 17 20:49:26 EST 2002


> Vendor involvement: smtp, mta, and maybe even routers and isp vendors may need
> to become deeply involved.  They are at the present highly disincented to be
> involved in the fight against spam.  In some ways, a fight against spam could
> be perceived as a fight against some of these vendors, and it would behove
> (sp?) us to woo them to our side before that point.


I actually tend to think this will not need integration as deep as you
suspect. Penny-per-email schemes make a lot of sense, for example. Camram is
interesting because it has many of the advantages without the dangers.

See http://spamland.org/jsp/Wiki?Ideas for links.

I'm not saying the final solution has to be chosen from those, at all -- I
think as things evolve, better solutions may appear (or may already exist).
But I do think it's likely that a practical solution will appear that really
only needs buy-in from users and email software providers.

Yes?

Right now, it's arguably the case only Microsoft has the umph to possibly
make such a solution appear, but I think most of the rest of us would like
to see a completely open solution that any open-source software provider (or
non-MS commercial vendor) can participate in. And Microsoft is unlikely to
play in such a space unless it has no choice because the standard is already
accepted.

> Legal ramifications: the first thing that jumps to my mind here is that the
> emergence of a powerful antispam organization gives spammers a nicely visible
> legal target for lawsuits, etc.  They could claim infringement of rights,
> which puts things in a federal arena.  Also, multinational stuff gets
> involved, which complicates things considerably.  I think we should pay close
> attention to this kind of issue.

That's not something I've considered. You're talking about free speech
rights? I wonder what precedent there is...

One thing I think of is that some telcos sell features where  unknown
callers have to record who they are, so that people have a choice about
whether to let them through...

We'd have to talk to a lawyer about this, but my guess is we could get some
pro bono time.

Good point, I'm glad you brought it up!

> May I propose a whitepaper?  I'd be happy to work with you (or someone) on it.
> I'm somewhat of a neophyte on the subject still, but I have good writing
> skills, and my naivete (sp?) might prove to be an asset.  Paul Graham's
> article certainly stirred worldwide action, and an article like this might be
> just the ticket...

Yeah, I think a whitepaper is a great idea. I personally couldn't take the
time to make a really polished one now, so teaming up could be a good idea.
Also, I was thinking of offering to talk about it at the Jan 17 conference
in Cambridge, if initial feedback on these lists is decent (with the
expected exceptions, of course). It seemed to me that that might be a good
place to further test the waters before spending a lot of time on a polished
white paper.

To me, the ideas we're discussing seem logical, at least tentatively, with
the big caveat that some people just won't want to include a URL in their
sigs no matter whether or not it will ultimately save them significant time
every day or help their emails get through! Such practicalities will take
second place. What I don't know is what proportion of people will feel that
way and what proportion would like to participate in a practical path to
solving the problem.




--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: Tim Stone - Four Stones Expressions <tim@fourstonesExpressions.com>
> Reply-To: tim@fourstonesExpressions.com
> Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 16:04:39 -0600
> To: Gary Robinson <grobinson@transpose.com>
> Subject: Re: [Spambayes] Two Stage Plan
> 
> Gary, you've made some very good points here.  There are several avenues
> remaining to be identified.  Two that I can think of (off the top of my head)
> are: vendor involvement, and legal ramifications.
> 
> Vendor involvement: smtp, mta, and maybe even routers and isp vendors may need
> to become deeply involved.  They are at the present highly disincented to be
> involved in the fight against spam.  In some ways, a fight against spam could
> be perceived as a fight against some of these vendors, and it would behove
> (sp?) us to woo them to our side before that point.
> 
> Legal ramifications: the first thing that jumps to my mind here is that the
> emergence of a powerful antispam organization gives spammers a nicely visible
> legal target for lawsuits, etc.  They could claim infringement of rights,
> which puts things in a federal arena.  Also, multinational stuff gets
> involved, which complicates things considerably.  I think we should pay close
> attention to this kind of issue.
> 
> May I propose a whitepaper?  I'd be happy to work with you (or someone) on it.
> I'm somewhat of a neophyte on the subject still, but I have good writing
> skills, and my naivete (sp?) might prove to be an asset.  Paul Graham's
> article certainly stirred worldwide action, and an article like this might be
> just the ticket...
> 
> - TimS
> 
> 12/17/2002 3:23:00 PM, Gary Robinson <grobinson@transpose.com> wrote:
> 
>> 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
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Spambayes mailing list
>> Spambayes@python.org
>> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/spambayes
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> c'est moi - TimS
> www.fourstonesExpressions.com
> http://spamland.org/jsp/Wiki?ToDestroySpamIncludeThisLinkInAllLegitEmails
> 
> 




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