[Spambayes] how spambayes handles image-only spams

Mark Hammond mhammond at keypoint.com.au
Fri Sep 5 11:19:02 EDT 2003


> From: Bill Yerazunis [mailto:wsy at merl.com] 
> 
> > No, my corpora agree with Tim Peters 
> > - spammers use HTML far more often 
> > than "normal" users.
> 
> In my opinion, this is simply untrue, 

The problem is that there is no such thing as a "normal" user when
considering SpamBayes, and particularly the Outlook addin.

Some "normal" users get the vast majority of their ham as html.  I know lots
personally.  Some "normal" users get more plain text - but I don't hang out
with many of them in real life!

> > Statistically speaking, HTML mail is 
> > either from a spammer or from a clueless 
> > git, and in either case can usually be 
> > delayed without penalty or discarded outright.
> 
> As indicated above, I do not think this analysis is true anymore. And
> characterizing someone as a clueless git because they don't 
> change their
> mail client's default message format or "love" plain text... Well, let
> us know when you get back to the real world. 

I agree 100%.  I fear we are starting to sound condescending - such labels
and telling users "trust us, you really don't want that feature" doesn't
help anyone.

> > Similarly, base-64 encodes are almost _always_ trash.
> 
> I agree, except for in-line images sent with email newsletters and the
> like.

The problem is that we simply don't know.  One man's trash is another's
treasure.  We clearly need more research, but we have to be careful not to
base too many assumptions on testing the mail of us geeks <wink>

Mark.
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