From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/39972 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Jason R. Mastaler" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: thoughts on spam Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2001 00:00:16 -0700 Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: References: <87y9m9fs6b.fsf@squeaker.lickey.com> <87elo1exsd.fsf@squeaker.lickey.com> <20011102160930.CC3D1BD52@squeaker.lickey.com> <87wv192jzh.fsf_-_@mclinux.com> <861yjgbygz.fsf@duchess.twilley.org> <20011102235444.E9C73BD48@squeaker.lickey.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035175596 30777 80.91.224.250 (21 Oct 2002 04:46:36 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 04:46:36 +0000 (UTC) Return-Path: Original-Received: (qmail 25537 invoked from network); 4 Nov 2001 07:01:24 -0000 Original-Received: from malifon.math.uh.edu (mail@129.7.128.13) by mastaler.com with SMTP; 4 Nov 2001 07:01:24 -0000 Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu ([129.7.128.10] ident=lists) by malifon.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 160HH0-0006RU-00; Sun, 04 Nov 2001 01:00:50 -0600 Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Sun, 04 Nov 2001 01:00:29 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from sclp3.sclp.com (qmailr@sclp3.sclp.com [209.196.61.66]) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id BAA06237 for ; Sun, 4 Nov 2001 01:00:16 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: (qmail 25520 invoked by alias); 4 Nov 2001 07:00:31 -0000 Original-Received: (qmail 25514 invoked from network); 4 Nov 2001 07:00:29 -0000 Original-Received: from localhost (HELO nightshade.la.mastaler.com) (jason@127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 4 Nov 2001 07:00:29 -0000 Original-Received: (qmail 4482 invoked by uid 666); 4 Nov 2001 07:00:17 -0000 Mail-Followup-To: ding@gnus.org Original-To: ding@gnus.org Mail-Copies-To: never X-Face: "Whz7py/hGVg+:}u&Q$/5z>j)gy%qNRX{j]0xGF&?Z"^b3`[6dY'^jSDlZDHh$m1~YX6U3J 1gOce%&je3)lVMOa/P,=9Kj:lmZb6]1hMmam*SW$GrVPa>b05y9/svb[uX.i><]^; iE1^(p_*=eLQJ6g$[aOX9I#`DCP\^O=RR:7|95hZ In-Reply-To: (Stainless Steel Rat's message of "04 Nov 2001 01:01:47 -0500") Original-Lines: 42 User-Agent: Gnus/5.090004 (Oort Gnus v0.04) XEmacs/21.4 (Artificial Intelligence, i386-unknown-freebsd4.4) X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA v0.39/Python 2.1.1 (freebsd4) Precedence: list X-Majordomo: 1.94.jlt7 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:39972 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:39972 Stainless Steel Rat writes: > Whitelists have their own risks that I would rather not have to deal > with at the delivery level. For example, I post something to a > mailing list, someone wants clarification about that thing and would > prefer not to discuss it on the list. His mail bounces because he > is not in my whitelist. Sure, he gets a note saying, "here is how > to get on Rat's whitelist." That is a pain in the ass, plain and > simple. This is exactly what TMDA's 'dated' addresses are for. You control when they expire, and within that interval, anyone can contact you at that address. I've found that with my whitelist and using 'dated' addresses on mailing lists and USENET, very few people actually end up having to confirm messages. Confirmation involves the 2-click/key sequence of replying to a message, and it's only a one time ordeal for them anyway. Hardly a pain in the ass IMO. > Whitelists do not scale well at all, which is why SpamCop is moving > away from a whitelist/blacklist scheme to an heuristic scheme that > they have found blocks more spam with fewer false positives than the > combined white and black lists. First, SpamCop is different in that they use global lists which end up much larger than TMDA's per-user lists. With wildcard expressions and DBM/CDB support, scalability is not much of a problem anyway, even with fairly large lists. Second, as explained on the homepage, TMDA is "whitelist-centric" which means use of a blacklist is downplayed in favour of the whitelist. Whitelists are generally much smaller than blacklists. I don't know all the details about the SpamCop decision, but I really don't see how any heuristic could be more effective than what I'm doing now. (I've already mentioned how many SPAMs I now get). Using heuristics puts you right back into that "race condition" with the spammers. Spam software implementors are just as clever and motivated as we are. As far as false positives, I've not had yet (in over 6 months) had one, and I'm sure any TMDA will tell you the same. Unnecessary complexity is what gets you into trouble in that area. TMDA's methodology is very simple, which I think is its greatest strength.