Unfilterable spam (shock horror)

[Tom Anderson]

On Thu, 2004-02-05 at 15:55, Gyepi SAM wrote:
> I imagine this would be most effective against companies, but even
> private isp clients may be susceptible. This could take a long time to run,
> so the spammer could maintain a database of domains and decoy words which is
> infrequently updated.

This is not a likely scenario.  The only advantage that spamming offers
is its massively bulk nature.  Spammers get around a 0.01% response
rate.  It wouldn't be worth their effort to build a database of millions
of domains, each with a corresponding list of words which may or may not
have any impact on the users of that domain, and then dynamically build
custom emails from that database.  They would surely see their profits
immediately evaporate.  Furthermore, trying to hamify a message in this
way is always destined to eventually fail (after perhaps a few successes
though), since training on those spams will make the hamifying impact
less and less each time.  Therefore, future hams will be identified by
those words that the spammer didn't reap from your website.  I can't
imagine very many people will be emailing you only using words from your
website, and even if they did, you could still distinguish ham from spam
via headers.  Moreover, several words on your website may actually
become very spammish in your emails if people almost never use them in
hams, so this technique could backfire enormously.

I'm not worried.

Also, as someone who works in a company which employs (legitimate) bulk
email, I can tell you that the CAN-SPAM law is causing ripples in the
industry.  Between this legislation and increasingly effective and
widespread filters, I can perhaps see an end of the spam problem as it
no longer becomes cost-effective for the spammers.  Then again, maybe
I'm underestimating them.  But it seems that the huge influx of spam as
of late may just be the dying gasp of many spammers who are trying
desperately to figure out how to get through the filters and still reach
a few prospects.  But as their response rates continue to sink, and the
possibility of legal action increases, the risk will no longer be worth
the measley few in a million that may respond.  Already, many
"legitimate" email advertisers are closing up shop and concentrating on
alternative advertising methods, including search engines and banner
ads.  The non-legitmate spammers will soon follow, and go back to
collecting welfare.

Tom

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