On Thu, 6 Mar 2003, Clayton, Nik [IT] wrote:
As soon as these [Bayes, et al] become widely deployed, and the
majority of recipients have filters that are so customised that it's
nigh-on-impossible for a spammer to guarantee that their e-mail will
get through, doesn't spamming then become so uneconomical as to die
out?
I realise that this could be seen as being slightly optimistic, ...
Long-term, you may be right... I just don't want to wait that long.
I suspect that spam is already uneconomical, unless you're a professional
spamming services provider (SSP). The SSP's revenue does not depend on
the ability of spam to get through, it depends on the SSP's ability to
make greedy scam artists *think* that spam gets through.
As long as spam makes up, say, 1% of the messages that people see, the
SSPs will tell their clients that they can get *their* messages through.
The latter are eager to believe that they can get rich quick, so they
probably won't be difficult to convince.
I think it will be a very long time before the filtering arms race alone
results in spam levels low enough to make con artists believe that their
messages won't get through.
--
Nate Waddoups
Redmond WA USA
http://www.natew.com
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