[Spambayes] To think like a spammer...

[Mark M. Hoffman]

... that is, if spammers could think.

The spambayes scheme (and others like it that I've seen) can be defeated
easily, with something like this...

<spam>

THIS  IS  A   F A N T A S T I C   O P P O R T U N I T Y ! !

W A N T  TO  MAKE  A  TON  OF  M O N E Y   ? ? ?

THIS   W E B S I T E   HAS  THE  A N S W E R   TO  ALL  YOUR
F I N A N C I N G   P R O B L E M S ! ! !

IT  COULD  NOT  BE   E A S I E R ! ! !   C L I C K  HERE NOW ! ! !

http://blah.blah.com/blah/blah.html

</spam>

Even if you back up and allow single character tokens, you're only going
to recognize a handful of those.  A spammer could stuff the end of the
message with ham words to overcome the effect of the single char. tokens.
Do these space-words have to be collapsed to defeat the effect?

Actually, protection against stuffing the end of a spam w/ ham words is
an angle we have to be careful about anyway.

Regards,

-- 
Mark M. Hoffman
mhoffman@lightlink.com