Another tool in the war on SPAM (SPAMBAYES)

[Gordon Moore]

http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/spambayes/

Let's get the link out of the way because you'll want to go here and learn all you can and download this wonderful FREE add-in for outlook 2000 or xp ...sorry no outlook express :x

This employs the mathematical prinicples develop by Thomas Bayes specifically his statiscal inference theorem. Better known as a Bayesian filter, SpamBayes determines probabilities and best of all it learns. It takes a little bit of training but it's painless and once it's out of the way the effectiveness starts to become evident.

We are testing it on outlook at work and so far I'm very impressed.




"A RONSTER!"

[SiliGoose]

Out of curiosity: Do you guys get much spam?

I log more time on the Internet more than anyone I know. I've always heard how evil spam is and how it cloggs the inboxes of so many people -but I've never seen it myself.

I guess I'm lucky or protective with my email address but I maybe get 2 or 3 spam-type messages a day. I don't consider that an epidemic at all.




-Sili

[Gordon Moore]

I get maybe 5-10 messages a day at home. I get nothing at work, which suggests that my POP account employs some sort of filtering.

I don't see it as an epidemic but on Hotmail my junkmail filter traps 100's of spam messages.

We didn't get any spam until my wife made the mistake of using our home address instead of my hotmail one for places that wanted an email when you go to their site.

Does spam bother me....actually not really...I don't read it I just simply delete it and go on with my day. Now I have 2 young boys 2 1/2 and 4. They have taken an interest in the computer and while I want them knowlegeable I don't need them clicking on mail (obviously when they are a little older) that start off with "Hi" and then throw you a very explicit porno page when you open it up. I want to shield them as best I can from that. So in that regard, 1 naughty spam is 1 too many...if you get my drift.

I do continual filtering of my home isp's mailserver with mailwasher from work (since I have a constant connection for the whole day) so that when email is eventually downloaded at home by me or my wife...it is generally crap free.




"A RONSTER!"

[Bing Fung]

I received the samll amount of spam but it wasn't until I started dabbling with spam filters & SW that I started getting a ton of it. :LOL:

I don't know if there is any correlation to that, but I have a conspireicy theory that when you use spam filters, it just signs you up for more spam, knowing that you will eventually see or have to deal with it in one way or another. You may just decide to read it or not, however you have seen it so it was a success.

I have been using that mailwasher (bouncing) in hopes that my spam would lessen. I'm not sure if it has as I auto bounce and delete enabled. I'll have to turn it off and see if it has diminished my spam level. Typically I got about 50 spam mails a day. I was using cloudmark and it would just delete them as it seen them with out bouncing, it was a nicely integrated package that moved the spam to a Spam folder, however you were still required to take out the trash .




Bing

[SiliGoose]

I don't see it as an epidemic but on Hotmail my junkmail filter traps 100's of spam messages.

Yea, I think Hotmail actually means "spam magnet" in some obscure language.

I don't know if there is any correlation to that, but I have a conspireicy theory that when you use spam filters, it just signs you up for more spam

LOL! I wouldn't be surprised.

I have cloudmark installed and I really like it. Very well integrated and I like the fact that everything goes to a "Spam" inbox so you can check it before deletion. I also like the fact that Cloudmark rates spam based on user interaction. Consider something Spam? Just click the block button and it adds it to the Cloudmark database...enough people recognize the same source as spam and the software blocks it automatically.




-Sili

[Sonnie Parker]

I ran Cloudmark for some time but now use Outlook 2003. Outlook 2003 is only in the beta stages but can be had from various sources if you look around and it's worked flawlessly for us.

Like Cloudmark it will move all the junk mail to a junk folder or you can choose to have it permanently delete the junk mail. It also has four levels of protection.

At home it eliminates approximately 100 spams a day that we no longer even see as we have them permanently deleted. At work I wasn't getting much spam but a few would sneak through, not any more!

We tried sifting through the junk mail for a month or so but not once ran across an e-mail that we cared anything about. Now we just have it deleted for us.

For a change, Microsoft has actually developed a good anti-spam e-mail program.






SONNIE

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[HowardGjr]

Gordon,

Spam is a pain in the butt. It's just organized virtual vandalism.

Back before time (ok it was the late 80's), I did some work with Bayesian classifiers (filters). From what I gather, they have become a very effective tool for reducing the level of email spam. I suspect that part of the reason that they are working well is because the spammers lack imagination in their approach to marketing. Often, the messages include heavy punctuation (!!!!), common words and phrases (Free, Viagra, "size matters", etc) and use convuluted email addresses in the headers. This information is precisely what the Bayesian approach uses to discriminate between "good" and "bad" email. Unfortunately, my guess is that spammers will develop countermeasures to this approach. They will try to make their email look and feel more like "regular email". Of course, this makes the classifiers job significantly more difficult.

Another well known problem with Bayesian approaches is the false positive. As the filter gets better, you'll naturally trust it more and be less likely to check the "spam file" for legitimate email. Unfortunately, the probability of a "false positive" (the filter misclassifies real email as spam) will not be zero. Depending the importance of your email to your business, this may not be unacceptable.