cellio: (spam)
Monica ([personal profile] cellio) wrote2004-04-14 10:58 am
Entry tags:

another anti-spam tool

I'm surprised no one has implemented this before now.

Spam-detection based on sender, message format, keywords, and analysis of headers has been getting harder; the spammers are coming up with new techniques faster than the good guys are coming up with antedotes. One thing that they can't completely disguise, though, is the web sites they're advertising. Enter the Spam URI Realtime Blacklist. That's just brilliant. My mail provider started using it yesterday, and it's already making a difference for me.

It's not a silver bullet; spammers will defeat it in time. But I like to think that maybe they're going to have to work a little harder at it than at finding yet another undefended relay or anti-Baysian trick or whatever.

Oh, and an interesting statistic: my provider is seeing an average of 10 pieces of spam per customer per hour, which is somewhat more than what I've personally been seeing (about 125 per day). They say soem customers get ten times that. Eeek.
siderea: (Default)

[personal profile] siderea 2004-04-14 06:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Whoohoo! Thanks for the head's up; I've emailed my ISP about this. I've been talking about this for quite some time; I'm glad someone implemented it.

Of course, if they had implemented it *right* -- it *must* involve P2P+PGP instead of client/server or the spammer will hammer it into the ground with a DDoS, like has been happening with other RTBL services -- that would be better.

That said, my full idea was to combine this with the very obvious "DDoS@Home" screen-saver, to punish anyone foolish enough to advertise their website via spam.