on 5/26/2003 12:40 PM Dean Anderson wrote:
<taxonomy and observations snipped>
The issue of detecting abuse was the focus of the MIT anti-spam
conference. There are many paths presently being pursued: Blacklists,
header analysis, and various kinds of content analysis. I think the
general consensus was that content analysis offers the most promising
means of detecting and blocking abuse.
The problem is that this defines defeat as victory.
There is also existent proof that filtering is only "mostly" successful at
even its limited role. There are plenty of problems with false positives,
delayed positives, and so forth, which cumulative conspire to make this
approach less than functional as anything but a stop-gap measure. In that
regard, filtering is analogous to defining ~delayed defeat as victory.
What would victory actually look like? To me, it would be keeping the crap
off my network in the first place. Forcing people to engage in full-time
warfare with the ethically bankrupt is not a victory. Telling people to
give up and take it is not a victory.
--
Eric A. Hall http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/