Spam Wars Make Strange Bedfellows

Spam Wars Make Strange Bedfellows
Jon Lasser, 2003-03-05

The open-source community is closer than ever to curing the spam problem, but they'll have to hold their noses and help out Windows users to get there.

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Spam Wars Make Strange Bedfellows 2003-03-06
Anonymous

I agree, something should be done for spam. I have to close my email boxes every 5-6 months because I recieve too much spam even tough I'm not registering to ANY newsgroop and letters.

Good luck....

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Spam Wars Make Strange Bedfellows 2003-03-06
Anonymous (1 replies)

"Anti-Spam Research Group" - Link is not available ???...

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Spam Wars Make Strange Bedfellows 2003-03-08
Anonymous

http://www.irtf.org/charters/asrg.html...

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Bayesian filtering for windows... 2003-03-06
Anonymous (2 replies)

I have been using PopFile for a couple of months now and I must say it´s just great. In the 2 months I´ve been using it , it´s only made about 4 mistakes in sorting my mail and you can easily fix that through it´s web interface.And it works for every email client, not just Outlook.
http://popfile.s...

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Bayesian filtering for windows... 2003-03-08
Anonymous

I'll second the above. POPFile is great. I use it with Eudora. If it misclassifies e-mail, I only have to click a link in the headers to automatically go to the web-page to retrain it on that message.

Painless. Works on Windows. GPL. Active development community....

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Bayesian filtering for windows... 2003-03-10
Anonymous

Great reference. I'll try it at home. Not much help for Outlook in client/server mode though....

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Spam Wars Make Strange Bedfellows 2003-03-06
JonH

PopFile (popfile.sourceforge.net) is an open-source bayesian mailfilter that acts as a pop3 proxy and so works with any pop3 client. It's written in perl so it's cross platform and the windows installer includes the necessary perl executables so it's very easy for even a windows user to set up....

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43% of the university's 885,000 e-mail messages are spam 2003-03-07
Anonymous (1 replies)

Is this more accurately that "the spam which was detected comprised 43% of all email traffic" ?
Is this 43% by number of messages, of size of data ?...

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43% of the university's 885,000 e-mail messages are spam 2003-03-08
Anonymous

Yes, your phrasing was more accurate.

43% by number of messages, not size of data.

-- Jon...

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Spam Wars Make Strange Bedfellows 2003-03-09
Inactivex666

Although I am glad to see your article on SecurityFocus site, as an indication of just how severe the problem of spam email has become, I am unhappy, in fact downright disappointed, that you focus on filtering, especially keyword filtering against probably body as well as subject, to the exclusion o...

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Spam Wars Make Strange Bedfellows 2003-03-09
Anonymous

None of the solutions in this article fix the problem. The Internet bandwidth is still being used and thus slowing down the Internet as a whole. Something should be done from the sending end, we need stop the spammers from using legit servers (i.e. relaying) and other means that we can control. This...

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Spammunition 2003-03-10
Anonymous

"But if your users read mail using a different client, like Microsoft Outlook, you won't find it easy to work with the statistical filters."

There _is_ a freeware Bayesian Outlook 2000 add-on filter. It's called Spammunition. It works great:

http://www.upserve.com/spammunition/default.asp...

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SpamAssassin for Outlook 2003-03-11
Jason Reusch

I must make a shameless plug for an open source port of SpamAssassin to Outlook I'm working on

http://sa.reusch.net...

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SMTP Callback is the only way to fix this 2003-03-11
Anonymous (1 replies)

Making a SMTP (simple-mail transport protocol) callback (call back to the sender's SMTP Transport Agent (mail server) to ensure that the following information is valid:

, Postmaster

if neither of the receiptent are accepted, then the mailserver that you're receiving the SPAM from is not a ...

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SMTP Callback is the only way to fix this 2003-03-17
Coldman

Spammers will learn quick enough and will give correct answer to such callback. So what? :)
...

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Spam Wars Make Strange Bedfellows 2003-03-13
Thomas Nilsen

As Inactivex666 pointed out, I think that DNSBL lists will play a very important part of the fight against spam.

With correct use of DNSBL, where spammers are blocked at the MTA connection level - and not just tagged by a filter, the amount of data spammers can push on the internet is limited. O...

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Spam Wars Make Strange Bedfellows 2003-03-17
Anonymous

So far you are all chasing a problem that will never be solved. Take a look at the "I Cringly" column http://www.pbs.org/cringely/

The title to read is "For a Nickel I Will"

This is a much more elegant way to solve the problem. You will never stop all Spam, But this way at lease the spamme...

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