[plug] SPAM - howto queries

[Martin]

$author = "Bret Busby" ;
> 
> How does a person notify agencies, such as CAUBE, etc, of a spam or 
> email abuse complaint, so that action can be taken against the spammers?

the most succesful thing you can do for garden variety spam is complain to:

a) the network that originated the spam
b) any networks that relayed the spam
c) any networks hosting web sites referred to in the spam


> I do not know whether ISP's can filter spam on the basis of string 
> patterns within the messages, such as URL's, which, if possible, would 
> be a good way of the international agencies disrupting spam, by listing 
> the URL's within the spam messages, which the ISP's could use for spam 
> filtering. I assume that the ISP's that provide spam filtering, do use 
> message content for filtering, by searching for strings within messages? 
> Or, is that regarded as an invasion of privacy of the recipients, on the 
> basis that the ISP is perusing the recipients' messages?

the processing overhead is extremely high. note bigponds inability to cope
with a sudden increase in traffic.

a lot of filtering and recognition is best done at the edges. eg using a
bayesian filter on your desktop is the best way to filter spam because it
recognises what is normal for an individual to receive and tries to detect
anything out of the ordinary.


> The filtering of spam is becoming increasingly time consuming, as the 
> filters that I use on the subject, are requiring more and more work, as 
> the spammers are breaking up the strings with special characters, such 
> as quotation marks, carets, hyphens, and underscores, and PINE appears 
> to not have a way of filtering, using special characters as the filter 
> values. I believe that PINE similarly, cannot filter using the dot that 
> is used as the field separator in URL's.

you need to start using an automated tool to do it for you. bayesian filters
train themselves as new email (and spam) arrives. spamassassin is constantly
having it's tests tweaked.


> I am aware of software being available for dealing with spam, but, as 
> the LinuxAus list has been unable to use SpamAssassin to effectively 
> stop spam on that list, I doubt the effectiveness of anti-spam software, 
> when people more knowledgeable than me, are unable to use it 
> effectively.

no software will be 100% as effective as a human at spotting spam but it is
getting close and can save you a lot of time. a quick perusal of your spam
folder for false positives is a lot easier then selectively deleting from
your inbox.

marty

-- 
newsdee   - "...and thanks for the sp correction. I improve my English 
             through Slashdot :-)" [1]

Carbonite - "Sweet Jesus! That's like improving your health through 
             heroin." [2]

[1] - http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=66478&cid=6116042
[2] - http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=66478&cid=6116149
_______________________________________________
plug mailing list
plug at plug.linux.org.au
http://mail.plug.linux.org.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/plug