"Jon Kyme" <jrk(_at_)merseymail(_dot_)com> wrote:
Keyword/heuristic hacks *after* an *email* has been received are simply
trying to treat the disease, and very poorly at that.
It's not clear that this is true.
Cleaning up after a problem is always worse than preventing the
problem in the first place.
Many "Keyword/heuristic hacks" (by which I suppose you
mean content-filters) have good perfomance - as many satisfied users will
hasten to point out.
That's certainly true.
Anything that reduces the amount of spam actually
reaching inboxen will have an impact on the spammers business model.
I've seen no evidence to show that that's true.
This is a problem where reducing the severity of the "symptoms"
actually has an effect (how big?) on the cause of the "disease".
Based on my experience, I believe that only about 10% of delivery
attempts by spammers end up being accepted by the MTA. I believe that
spammers will see an effect of anti-spam measures only if their
successful deliveries drop by at least another 3 orders of magnitude.
It's not clear that the mail transport system posesses an immune system.
Until it does, development of a vaccine would be premature.
Multiple anti-spam solutions distribute signatures of spam, to
"vaccinate" other systems. But the spammers are still acting as
"typhoid mary's", and creating more problems.
Hmm... maybe that's another useful pejorative term for spammers,
instead of the positive sounding "spam king". "Typhoid Mary of Spam"...
Alan DeKok.
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