[Spambayes] Blueprints magazine story on SPAM

[Skip Montanaro]

    Dara> I am looking for someone at SpamBayes who might be willing to be
    Dara> quoted as a source in my story.  The piece will be a general
    Dara> overview covering what SPAM is, how it has affected worker
    Dara> productivity, what government is doing to decrease SPAM and what
    Dara> Internet users can do to reduce the amount of SPAM they
    Dara> receive. I'll also be writing a sidebar on software solutions that
    Dara> exist to help decrease SPAM.

Dara,

I'm sure there are people who might be willing to be quoted in your story,
however it seems from your email that you are under the impression that
SpamBayes is a company of some sort.  Spambayes is an open source software
project.  The developers are literally scattered all over the globe.

Very briefly:

    Dara> 1. Tell me about your software solution, how it works and what it
    Dara>    does.

Given a pile of good email (ham) and a pile of bad email (spam) Spambayes
notes how many times each clue (basically a word) occurs in ham or spam.  It
then uses the accumulated counts it's gathered from its training messages to
classify messages it hasn't previously seen.  Each message it's presented
with is given a score between 0 and 1 and a one-word rating: "ham", "unsure"
or "spam".  (That is a very rough description.  You'll probably find
something more coherent at <http://spambayes.sf.net/>.)

Because there are many different ways people read email, several different
ways of using Spambayes have been developed.  Undoubtedly the most popular
way to use it so far is via the Outlook plugin.

    Dara> 2. What are the system requirements and costs for your solution? 

Spambayes will run anywhere Python will run.  It's free.

    Dara> 3. Who is the typical user of your solution? (e.g. what size of
    Dara>    business, how much email does that account typically receive,
    Dara>    etc.)

I'm not sure Spambayes has a "typical" user.  We're more-or-less just a
bunch of geeks trying to stem the flow of spam to our own inboxes.
Spambayes is probably not widely enough available yet to have really reached
a large number of "average Internet users".  Most of the Spambayes
developers probably get far more email (and thus more spam) than average.

    Dara> 4. Can you suggest any practical ways that a user might reduce the
    Dara>    amount of SPAM that they get in their inbox?

I find that running Spambayes helps. ;-) Seriously, I've tried a number of
different things in the past.  Spambayes is the first spam filter that's
made me stop looking for a better solution.

    Dara> 5. Is there anything else you'd like to tell me about SPAM and/or
    Dara>    how to combat it?

* Don't bother trying to "hide" your email address.  It doesn't work.

* Don't bother trying to create your own spam filters.  They don't work.

* Don't bother trying to create "whitelists" or "blacklists".  They don't
  work.

    Dara> If you're interested in taking part in this story, please have
    Dara> someone email me or call me at (401) 231-9389 as soon as possible
    Dara> so that we can set up a time to speak. I'm about a week away from
    Dara> my deadline, so I'll need to move as quickly as possible on this.

    Dara> Thanks in advance for your help and for any information you can
    Dara> provide.

You're welcome.

-- 
Skip Montanaro
Got gigs? http://www.musi-cal.com/
Got spam? http://spambayes.sf.net/