Re: TMDA (was: new spam functionality added)

[Scott A Crosby <scrosby@cs.rice.edu>]

On Mon, 05 Aug 2002 19:38:07 +0200, Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:

> But I don't consider the problem with people who will refuse to spend
> a second or two to confirm their existence for significant.  I lose
> mail today because by filters (automatic and manual) are too
> agressive, and I can't afford the time to use less agressive filters:
> 
> - Today, I can lose mail from anybody, through no fault of theirs.
>   Even if it is something that it is very important to them that I
>   see.
> 
> - With TMDA, I will only lose mail from people who deliberately decide
>   that getting their message through isn't worth two seconds of their
>   tine.

No, you lose email from anyone who is aware that you have TMDA and
doesn't want to have to deal with your autoreply messages.


However, if you (purposely or inadvertently) *hide* the fact that you
use TMDA. Then you're exploiting the fact that most people will
respond out of a psychological need to not feel like they wasted their
time. Many people will spend an extra 10 seconds to avoid having their
email deleted unread (and thus wasting the results of several minutes
work). 


I fall into the first catagory. I'll be happy as long as I can detect
users of such autoreply robots.[1]

Scott


[1] The following score rules seem to detect some TMDA-containing
emails. They will not work on a mailing list that has reply-to
munging. Alter the scores to suit.

(("extra"
  (".*[-+]\\(dated\\|exp\\|sender\\|keyword\\)[-+]" -2001 nil r "Reply-To"))
 ("from"
  ("[-+]\\(dated\\|exp\\|sender\\|keyword\\)[-+]" -2001 nil r)))

These split-fancy rules attempt to detect an auto-reply.
	 ("X-Delivery-Agent" "TMDA" "junk.tmda")
	 ("Delivery-Agent" "TMDA" "junk.tmda")

Advice for fixing/cleaning these up or enhancing these rules is
welcome. I have had limited exposure to TMDA autoreplies.