Thursday·02·March·2006
Can the spam problem be solved? //at 02:23 //by abe
Many have tried to solve spam problem, even Micrsoft (with a quite strange solution ;-), but except personal solutions like well working and well-kept spam filters, no well-working general technical solution has been found yet.
Although I really would like to see a technical solution and often think about this problem, I currently believe that this primarily is a social problem which cannot be solved solely with technic. UserFriendly’s Erwin seems to see it the same way and proposed today a quite drastical solution.
There are good ideas out there (e.g. SPF, RBL, Greylisting and Teergrubing), but all seem to have their problems, too. Especially RBL often have administrative problems, i.e. if an entry is justified or not. Greylisting simply can be bypassed by being SMTP conform and trying again, so it’s usefulness will decrease permanently. And against Lutz Donnerhacke’s teergrubing, spammers seem to have found workarounds quite quickly. Haven’t heard much about it in the last years. (I just can’t remember what the drawback of SPF was.)
For myself I’ve solved the spam problem with a learning SpamAssassin
and sorting mail by spam-level into several mailboxes. The higher the
spam-level of such an inbox, the more seldom I look into it. Works
fine. For me. No general solution though, since the SpamAssassin needs
to be fed with fresh spam regularly.
Tagged as: Greylisting, Microsoft, RBL, SMTP, Spam, SpamAssassin, SPF, Teergrubing, UserFriendly, VHEMT
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Related stories
Cheap blue pills //at 02:22 //by abe
I just got an obvious spam e-mail with subject “cheap blue pills” and
it took me quite a moment to realise that they don’t want me to buy
pills which let me keep everyone I love and
everything that I have built my life upon. What a pity. But why
don’t they sell also red pills? ;-)
Tagged as: Geek, SCNR, Spam, The Matrix
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