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Re: A (possibly) novel way of dealing with spam/UBE

1998-02-25 19:41:20
On Wed, 25 Feb 1998 psmith(_at_)oakland(_dot_)edu wrote:


So far all the spam filters I've seen work on the principle of allowing
mail through by default, but excluding mail which meets certain criteria
(from specific address or pattern, containing certain content, etc).

The problem there is that it is difficult if not impossible to teach a
computer to accurately decide if a mail is spam or not.  Generally you
just catch a small percentage of them with some rules, and then constantly
chase after the overspill with a "kill" list, always one step behind the
spammer.  Also, you might exclude mail which is really not spam.

Not so.  I use a combination of a whitelist (known mailers), a known
twit-list (spam mailers, idiots, standard spammness stuff), and a
scorefile.

I rarely spend more than 10 minues a month now updating my filters, and
have not lost any legit mail in over a year.