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RE: [Asrg] Content based filtering

2003-03-18 13:56:40
From: asrg-admin(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org [mailto:asrg-admin(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] 
On 

Damien Morton wrote:
I have a basic problem with any approaches that mandate 
being able to 
read the contents of an email in order to classify it as 
spam or not. 
Whilst the current mail infrastructure makes it easy for servers to 
read the contents of mail, this neednt necessarily always 
be so. These 
systems can also be avoided by various transformations, such as 
slice-and-dice tables, misspellings, etc etc. Further, any content 
oriented detection systems could easily be repurposed for privacy 
invasion purposes.

A mail server can be easily repurposed for privacy invasion 
... just a 
few source code hacks and voila, all of everyone's email.  It's not a 
very good argument.  That's for privacy legislation to deal with, and 
not a reason why content filters (or filters that work with other 
criteria than "content") cannot be used when appropriate consent is 
obtained.


Like I said, future mail systems might make reading of the content of an
email more difficult than it is now. This would destroy any anti-spam
infrastructure that relies on content reading.

I don't think its enough to rely on privacy legislation. As we have seen
with spam, anything that can be done cheaply and easily is highly
resistant to legislation. We should not be building systems that can be
cheaply and easily subverted into becoming vast distributed line-eaters.

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