Posted by Nikita the Spider on 10/14/06 17:08

In article
<doraymeRidThis-040F31.06364014102006@news-vip.optusnet.com.au>,
dorayme <doraymeRidThis@optusnet.com.au> wrote:

> In article
> <NikitaTheSpider-445C39.10222813102006@news-rdr-01-ce0-1.southeas
> t.rr.com>,
> Nikita the Spider <NikitaTheSpider@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Working *now* is no guarantee what so ever for being effective in the
> > > near
> > > future.
> >
> > The same could be said for all spam blocking methods (my Bayesian
> > filters used to work a lot better, for example). So should we should
> > abandon all attempts to block spam because none of them are guaranteed?
> > Hmmmm, OK. But you go first. ;)
>
> Actually, Spider, I was just saying to a friend this morning, my
> Mac Mail.app filters based on this type of mathematics is failing
> me lately... bit alarming actually, i am thinking is it the junk
> algorithms not learning any more (they used to be good) or are
> the spammers just on to these algorithms bigtime now. Never mind,
> clients, websites... I may need to actually buy a better spam set
> up for me... I suppose this is OT! But I was interested to hear
> your remark about Bayesian filters. Doubtless, there are all
> kinds of these...

I'm also using Mail.app. Many spams include random bits of prose
(non-spammy words) to offset the weight of the spammy content of the
email. This is a pretty effective technique against a lot of statistical
weighting filters, which is what I think Mail.app and lots of other
programs use.

--
Philip
http://NikitaTheSpider.com/
Whole-site HTML validation, link checking and more

[Back to original message]