Re: Unsolicited ads

[Steven L Baur <steve@miranova.com>]

>>>>> "Ketil" == Ketil Z Malde <ketil@ii.uib.no> writes:

>> David Worenklein <dcw@gcm.com> writes:
>> Some how, I've gotten onto an e-junk-mail list.  Has anyone thought
>> about ways of dealing with this?  For instance, maintaining a list
>> of all people who have sent me mail in the past and lowering the
>> score of an article if it's from someone not on the list?

The problem with this is that the worse offenders use throw-away
accounts, so the first message from that mailbox may well be the
last ...

Ketil> I maintain a list of all domains that have repeatedly sent me
Ketil> spam in the past, and use procmail to automatically discard
Ketil> mail from these domains.  Some magic ensures that messages that
Ketil> are replies to my own messages won't be affected.

Ketil> Of course, the list of rotten domains should perhaps be
Ketil> globally maintained, so that when enough spams have originated
Ketil> from some domain, it could be automatically blocked by all who
Ketil> wanted.

Yup.  There is a maintained black list.  Brian Edmonds
<edmonds@cs.ubc.ca> has a reference to it in a Gnus/antispam page:
	http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/edmonds/usenet/gnus/
(there's a reference to this in the Gnus FAQ).

Ketil> For my particular spam filtering, look at:
Ketil> http://www.ii.uib.no/~ketil/mailsorting.html 
(Also referenced by the Gnus FAQ, BTW).

The problem with any solution of this form is that it is reactive, and
ineffective against many spams.  A better long-term solution is going
to be maintaining a ``white list'', and filtering non-white list
e-mail to a lower priority mailbox.

I like the idea of only accepting personal e-mail that contains ecash
postage of some sort, and then only cashing in on the postage if you
deem the mail message not worth the time to read it.  The technology
for implementing this kind of a solution is well within the current
capabilities of Gnus all by itself, though it won't be of much use
until ecash (of whatever form) is more prevalent.

A wild idea off the top of my head:
How effective would a closed mailing list be that distributed the
equivalent of NoCEM information about spammers?  The messages would be
of the same form, and could be automatically processed by Gnus ...

-- 
steve@miranova.com baur
Unsolicited commercial e-mail will be proofread for $250/hour.
Andrea Seastrand: For your vote on the Telecom bill, I will vote for anyone
except you in November.