Re: OT: GMail and Spam

From: Craig Fink (WeBeGood_at_GMail.Com)
Date: 03/26/05 

Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2005 13:53:38 GMT

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 19:44:50 -0800, Alain Fournier wrote:

>
>
> Bruce Hoult wrote:
>
>> In article <43635e6d.1422001459@newsgroups.bellsouth.net>,
>> simberg.interglobal@org.trash (Rand Simberg) wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Well, that's the problem. Unless you use it long enough to get a very
>>>high degree of confidence in it, you still have to at least cursorily
>>>look through all the spam anyway...
>>
>>
>> True, but scanning a list of almost-certainly-spam and then hitting
>> "delete all" is a lot faster than scanning a list of all incoming mail
>> and marking the spam. I get something like 200 spams a day, and
>> scanning and emptying the spambin takes only a few seconds.
>>
>> Strangely, most of the false-postives that I get on gmail are either
>> emails that *I've* sent to mailing lists I'm subscribed to or else very
>> terse emails that I've sent to myself from another account containing
>> e.g. a URL I want to save.
>
>
> Last week a colleague needed to know the sex (gender) of some of
> our research subjects. So I decided to test the spam filter. I
> sent her an email with "sex" as subject line and about twelve
> lines of the form "1214 F", "1455 M" ... as the body of the email.
> Her filter worked properly and allowed the email to go through.
> When she asked for the gender of one more subject, I replied
> with an email having "more sex!!!" as the subject line and
> "1529 M" as the body. For some reason, the filter sent that
> message in the spam folder.
>
> So, yes those filters can discard some legitimate emails. But
> in most cases, the sender of such a discarded email will probably
> know that his message is at risk of being discarded and check
> with the recipient the status of that email. You don't have to
> be a genius to figure out that if you send legitimate mail about
> cheap meds, quick cash or sex you have to check if it went
> through.

Interesting spam test. Thanks for posting it.

To me, it seems that the improved filter of Google may even be improving
the quality of spam, while reducing the quantity. In comparing the spam
that my GMail account is getting, the rate isn't growing that much, and
the content seems to a little better than some of my older accounts. This
could be due to just the fact that the GMail account is new, but it makes
me wonder a bit.

When spammers figure out that everyone eventually will have good to
excellent spam filters, they will eventually have to figure out how better
to compete among themselves within the spam folder. In other word, as the
spoofing and tricks of the the trade to get past the spam filter no longer
work, it becomes more advantageous to work on appealing to those who
actually open the spam file to see what's there. Eye appeal, content, and
offering something you might actually want, with a nice presentation would
become more important. While deception, tricks, ... less important.

Maybe filters should have two settings, spam, and deceptive spam. A folder
within a folder, to make the reader work twice as hard, and go twice as
deep, with two clicks of the mouse, to look at the deceptive spam.

Maybe I'll post this one in Google suggestion box, after all they are
giving me this nice free E-mail account. 

-- 
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @ WeBeGood@GMail.Com

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