atw: Re: Moving at the speed of spam -AGAIN in TEXT

Excuse me -- I'll try to say that again !

[I thought I was sending in plain text format. Maybe I was=
 wrong.
This +should+ be plain text ]

On Tue, 23 Sep 2003 14:22:43 +1000, Steve Hudson wrote:
>You are all missing the basic point here. I am just one user, I=
 have
>had several MVP buddies yacking with me with the same problem.=
 There
>are MILLIONS of dud emails, weighing in at 150kb, being sent=
 every
>hour across the net because none of the hubs want to filter. So=
 the
>world suffers. These packages of crap could be stopped in their
>tracks almost after the point of origin. No-one would notice,=
 within
>a few days of a new outbreak every filter would know what to=
 block
>at the flood STOPS. We need an anti- dns type broadcast and the
>desire to maintain it by all companies.
>
>Unfortunately, they make money off bandwidth. The more spam you=
 get,
>the more bandwidth you need to buy off them. QoS is merely=
 something
>to whip the end user with.
>


Maybe not so much missing your point, Steve, as despairing of=
 the
option of getting ISPs to do it effectively, and moving on to=
 other
defensive strategies?

Mind you, I think there's a philosophical problem involved,=
 which
also has legal implications:

I don't +want+ my ISP deciding for me what I can read, any more=
 than
I want my government to decide it.

And the best and best-intentioned of spam filters still make=
 mistakes
-- of an occasionally funny kind.

A better solution would be if ISPs were to offer standardised
(therein lies a problem) filters which simply categorised emails=
 on a
probabilistic basis (as in Bayesian tests like SpamAssassin uses)=
 and
then provlde the option for users to make their own choices for
applying that filter, and if it is applied, limited their=
 downloading
-- based on (overridable) categorisations.

In other words, the ISP pre-processes content automagically to=
 apply
spam tests, then labels the dubious ones in one or more=
 categories :
a la "Probably SPAM", "Possibly SPAM", "Could be SPAM" etc...

All that takes is a SpamAssassin task running on the server, and
maybe the establishment of another standard mailbox for likely=
 spam,
for those who opt for that service.

But if an automatic checker totally blocked my access to an=
 email
that maybe looked like spam, but was actually an urgent business
communication, and I didn't receive it, I'd be shitty.

And if a lover decided to get explicit and tell me what she=
 really
wanted to do....   and that  was stopped, I'd be bereft,=
 particularly
if I never found out how she planned to increase the leng..... =
 --
never mind...

And ISPs know that. Well, they should.

-Peter G. Martin, 
Technical writer, Proxima Technology


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