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Re: Keep getting subborn spam with random words

2004-03-09 22:16:31
On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 22:24:19 PM -0600, Skip Montanaro 
(skip(_at_)pobox(_dot_)com) wrote:

There is a fairly well-understood way to fool a bayesian classifier
though. If you can associate a paragraph or two of meaningful text
with an email address ...

When bayesian email filters first appeared I wrote to ESR and Paul
Graham, (who write the theoretical paper behind them), to point out
exactly this problem. Graham answered the same thing as you:

I would not worry too much about spammers appending customized
text. They might append random text, or the same text to every
email, but anything that requires them to treat each recipient
individually is too expensive for them.

However, I'm not sure yet about this. If one contributes often to a
mailing list, how much hassle it is to automatically append a
different real message from that list archives to each spam? They
could also do this on a list basis. What do you think?

Ciao,
        Marco Fioretti 

-- 
Marco Fioretti                 m.fioretti, at the server inwind.it
Red Hat for low memory         http://www.rule-project.org/en/

Nature is very un-American.  Nature never hurries.
                                                -- William George Jordan

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