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Re: [Asrg] Filtering spam by detecting 'anti-Bayesian' elements?

2004-09-21 02:42:54
Laird Breyer wrote:
On Sep 21 2004, Jose Marcio Martins da Cruz wrote:

...

In the short term yes, but in the long term (ie with training), the
footer is recognized. No miracles. As a general rule, tokens which
occur commonly in both ham and spam, have little effect on a filtering
decision (Bayesian algorithms can vary). The decisions depend much
more on the presence of extreme tokens which (statistically) only
occur in spam, or only occur in ham (that's what I mean by extreme
here). It's very hard for spammers to discover which tokens are
extreme for any given individual.


In this cases, to be something acceptable, I define "ALL" as being 100%, and "MOST OF THE TIME" as being 99.99%.

...

For how many people simultaneously? Statistical filters are no miracle
workers, and I wouldn't want to give the impression they are.  Every
decision procedure has a nonzero error rate. You can approach your
target with personal filters, but of course if you also want to filter
spam on a corporate gateway it's a much more difficult problem.

I was merely pointing out that spammer attacks against statistical
filters are mostly hot air. Some attacks, such as exploiting bugs in
parsers, work. I'm not aware of any statistical attacks which work yet (ie
attacks which would make the algorithms useless). Of course, this is for personal filters. For corporate filters, the problem is harder in principle.

You're completely right on all this affirmations. What I really wanted to say is that statistical filters are very, very good for personnal use, but not for corporate structures. And most of the time I hear about bayesian/statistical filters, this particular point is left...


--
 ---------------------------------------------------------------
 Jose Marcio MARTINS DA CRUZ           Tel. :(33) 01.40.51.93.41
 Ecole des Mines de Paris              http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr
 60, bd Saint Michel                http://www.ensmp.fr/~martins
 75272 - PARIS CEDEX 06      
mailto:Jose-Marcio(_dot_)Martins(_at_)ensmp(_dot_)fr


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