in reply to A handy use for /usr/share/dict/words

It's not a two-state system, in which if you haven't "won", you have utterly lost. Having content-based filtering may be a 50 or 80 or 90% solution. Considering the amount of spam, that's considerable.

You seem to think it's preferable to have a zero percent solution, since you don't suggest anything else that people should work on.

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Re^2: A handy use for /usr/share/dict/words
by petdance (Parson) on Mar 01, 2005 at 04:16 UTC
    I'm not suggesting people remove their SpamAssassin installs. Lord knows I don't want to remove mine. What I am saying is that we're in to the area of diminishing returns. It's time for the next level of solution, more than the stopgap that we have.

    I don't know what the next solution is, but I do know that content-based filtering is not it. The people who are putting their time and energy into furthering such projects need to stop and point their energies elsewhere.

    xoxo,
    Andy

[reply]
      To me, the next solution is to have a WWW::Mechanize script that goes to the links in an email body, spiders around the site looking for forms, and fills in any TextArea it finds with the body of the spam (other blanks can be filled in with the From and Subject information). The idea is to find their "Contact Us" space and give them feedback. And to give them increased traffic without increased sales, which is sort of indirect feedback.
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