[BozemanLUG] Best spam filter

[Scott Dowdle]

Jordan.

----- Original Message -----
> I think the problem is artificial intelligence. A human can quickly
> identify spam, but from what I've seen most software is STILL bad at it. That
> is what needs to be fixed.

The difference here is that spam is unwanted unsolicited email.  If you want a newsletter from a product vendor, hopefully because you intentionally signed up for it, it isn't unwanted and it isn't unsolicited... but the email looks exactly the same if it is spam or if it isn't spam.  There is no way to make AI know what you wanted and what you didn't want... unless it were to be like a stateful firewall... where it can tell the difference between a new connection attempt, and one that is part of an existing conversation.  That seems really, really hard to me.

I think the reason the big companies seem to be successful at it is because they have millions of customers... and I'm guessing they monitor when an email with a certain pattern goes to a lot of users and how the first batch of receivers react to it... and maybe harness their judgement to figure out what to do with it... but given the typical speedy delivery times of mails... that won't work either... but it could give patterns for future emails.  I think the more users you have and the more you can muck with their incoming, reading and marking patterns... the more data you have to base decisions on.  Most small to mid-size companies only have access to the incoming patterns... and not the reading and marking... but since people like Google have the vast majority if their account holders using their web-based client (gmail), they have access to so much (reading, marking, deleting) and more including addressbook, all sent emails, etc.  Our simple SMTP servers just don't have access to all of those I/O paths.

TYL,
-- 
Scott Dowdle
704 Church Street
Belgrade, MT 59714
(406)388-0827 [home]
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