From: Bill Kelly <billk@...>
Date: 2009-06-06T15:23:23+09:00
Subject: Re: SPAM from Usenet


From: "Aaron Turner" <synfinatic@gmail.com>
>
> Personally, I'm about -> <- close to just sending all email from the
> gateway into my trash folder.  This is the only list I subscribe to
> (about 25) which allows non-members to post without any authentication
> or moderator approval.   The result is I get much more spam via
> ruby-talk then all my other lists combined.

Hmm.

This is starting to sound partly like a gmail problem.

I've used the same email address for 22 years, and I've 
never made much attempt to shroud the address in any
online posting.  As one might expect, I receive a TON
of spam.

But, I proxy all my POP3 email boxes through a local
spam filter, POPFile.  ( http://getpopfile.org/ )

Last month, May 2009, I received 50,361 spam emails.
334 got past the filter. (10.77 per day)

Not perfect, but 11 per day is a lot better than 1625
per day.  I'm on about 30 different mailing lists,
several POP3 inboxes, etc.

The ruby-talk spam is a drop in the bucket.  I suggest
it's partly a gmail problem, because (apparently) 
gmail doesn't allow any kind of local filtering (being
web-based.)

I.e. go back to POP3 as Al Gore intended!    ;D

. . .

As an aside, here's an idea for a ruby quiz.  Start
with a pre-existing Bayesian spam classifier and a
huge corpus of spam messages, and have quiz participants
augment the existing classifier by inventing new methods
of analyzing the kinds of messages that slip through
(such as ones that play HTML/CSS tricks to hide verbiage
intended to fool Bayesian filters, etc.)


Regards,

Bill