| Anti-spam software: Not a plug-and-play solution By Jay Dougherty
By Jay Dougherty, Washington- Soon after installing anti-spam software, Maryland-based marital therapist Laurie Thorner saw a welcome reduction in the amount of spam she received. Unfortunately, after a few weeks she also noticed an unwelcome reduction in the number of Internet-based referrals she was getting for her business. Only after she spoke directly with one of her colleagues who claimed to have e-mailed her multiple times did she link the installation of the anti-spam software with the reduction in business. "It turned out that the anti-spam software was identifying a lot of legitimate personal mail as spam, and I never saw it," Thorner told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. "That software definitely cost me money in lost business and lost time." Like many adopters of this still developing software category, Thorner learned the hard way that anti-spam solutions virtually never provide the "install it and forget it" solution that marketers promise.
False Positives and Ignorance
Content inspection is a poor way to recognise spam, and the proliferation of image spam recently drums this home. However if one must use these unreliable techniques, one should bring mathematical rigour to the procedure. Tools like SpamAssassin combine content inspection results, with other tests, in order to tune rule-sets to give acceptable rates of false positives (mistaking genuine emails for spam), and thus end up assigning suitable weights to different content rules. If one is going to use these approaches to filtering spam, and some see it as inevitable, one better know one's statistics, or trust the folk who write SpamAssassin to have good default rules. Most people are not good at statistics, so guess what they do? The default rules in SpamAssassin carry a lot of weight in the world of spam.
Does Spamming Pay?
Before I go on, I should say that by clicking that fun logo to the left, you can join the Spam Fan Club, i.e., the Hormel Spam Spiced Ham Fan Club. I have no idea what the perks are to being in such a club. Anyway, I have a new, persistent comment spammer that has been annoying me. This person started out by at least attempting to respond to the content of my posts, and then seems to have just given up any pretense about being legit and started leaving this comment on a zillion posts: Good post mate, very informative. This person also left a lot of the comments on long ago posts, maybe hoping they wouldn't be noticed by me. They were noticed. So, if you see a comment that says "good post, mate" you can assume it's really no mate of mine. The question, though, is this: Is anyone winning at this spamming game? Are people getting rich from spamming blog comments? I've heard that some of those investing spammers have managed to rope some people in with their e-mails, but blog comment spam? It seems like so much work for so little promise of gain.
Skype Spam
Instant Messaging spam isnt new to a lot of us, but for people who have just opened up a new Skype account it may be the first encounter you have. Last week, for example, when I was happily was working away, a rude message appeared from a random user, asking whether I would like to see "naughty things". This very unethical spammer was trying to push me towards his adult site via his spammy messages.This is potentially the worst form of spam I have ever encountered. I'm not easily offended, but he could just as easily been chatting to my seven year old daughter. It's unlikely that these highly unethical spammers check to make sure they're only spamming over 18s - but whatever age you are, receiving this type of spam can be very offensive.My first reaction to this kind of spam is to ignore it; close the message window and carry on with my work; but this persistent spammer kept IMing me until I was forced to stop work and take notice.
You're Invited! To a Spam Party
Amy Joyce, a colleague of mine here at The Post opened an Evite the other day to learn she had won 500,000 pounds in a Scottish lottery. Her "host" was one aptly named Steven Award. The location of the shindig: Scotland, UK. The date: Tuesday, Oct. 10, at noon. She was asked to supply her full name, ticket number, age, sex, occupation, address and telephone number. She also had to sign her name to the following: "I endorse that this email address is mine, and that I am the rightful winner of the random lotto prize," and was warned that any false declaration would be "persecuted by law." Evite, which is owned by Ticketmaster, explicitly forbids spamming. They also limit the number of people you can invite to 750 to prevent spamming and, according to an Evite spokeswoman, will kick you off Evite if you send out 750 E-mails and no one writes back.
Microsoft takes aim at spammers!
That's most of us on this planet, with presumable exception of the spammers of course. Unfortunately, it's been a never ending (and seemingly loosing) battle against those purveyors of unsolicited junk e-mail. Enough with the barrage of offers for male enhancement medication; that part of my anatomy is just fine, more than fine, thank you. No, I don't need to see some bleached blond pop/movie star babe devoid of clothing (which she can obviously afford); I am quite familiar with all those birds and bees as they may be. And for the last time, I am not going to render financial aide to some displaced African prince who'll share untold millions with me if send him a short term loan; I prefer to fund more tangible (more realistic) investments. But hopefully, what Microsoft is proposing, may actually help stem the tidal wave of spam that is drawing the Internet.
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