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Re: [Asrg] No, we're not going to define spam

2009-06-29 06:25:49
John Levine wrote:
I suspect that if we are not even able to agree on a definition of
spam, there will never be much efficient anti-spam research by our
group.

The world hasn't agreed on a definition of spam in 20 years, and I see
no reason to think that anything has changed that would make it
possible to do so now.

The European directives on privacy arrived around the turn of the century, so they are new in that respect. They may have all the defects that European directives usually have, but provide definitions. Not for spam, as I mentioned upthread; however, spam can be treated in that framework.

Fortunately, all of the popular definitions (UBE, UCE, UBCE, mail
recipients don't want) in practice tend to describe roughly the same
mail.

I'd say they just largely overlap. I'd guess one line of disagreement would be what kind of well behaved direct marketing, if any, should be considered non-spam. That is, whether the "U" in the above definition may be considered implicit, on the argument that recipients cannot solicit something whose existence they ignore.

MRDW (I'd propose to pronounce it "mérde-u", if that's the correct acronym for the last definition), although practical, is horrible.

I'd also add botnet/zombie generated, spam to that list.

 So my suggestion is that documents discussing anti-spam
techniques say which definition they're using, if it matters, and
leave it at that.  Readers specifically don't get to complain that
it's the wrong definition.

+1

That way, at least, we know what we're talking about. In addition, this suggestion leaves room for an eventual informative paper listing those popular definitions.
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