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Re: Keep getting subborn spam with random words

2004-03-09 18:29:07
Skip Montanaro wrote:
[...]
In the Spambayes project this stuff is called "word salad".  (I doubt the
term originated with us.)  The one conclusion we've reached so far about it
is that it generally doesn't bother the accuracy of our classifier.

I've been following similar discussions on the spamassassin and bogofilter lists. The general consensus is that the use of random words, or even strings of text from classical literature, actually helps mark the mail as spam. Afer all, I'm not likely to have strings of classical literature in my mail, while a lit major wil probably not have as much technical jargon. Once trained, the bayes tools do a good job recognizing whats out of place, rather than what's "wrong".

A fixed filter isn't necessarily impossible, but it will be tricky to avoid false positives.

- Bob


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