question of spam

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Benjamin Rifkin wrote:

> I hesitate to add to our inboxes in this discussion, but I thought
> I'd suggest that when the same or nearly the same e-mail message is
> sent from slightly different addresses, with slightly or very
> different subject lines, I would qualify the message as spam.  The
> posting in question (about a folklore expedition) has come to me over
> a dozen times in the last week, each with a slightly different e-mail
> address of origin, slightly different subject line, and each time
> defeating the filters I created to send the message to the trash
> (after the third message was received.)

Agreed.

FWIW, blocking a professional spammer's address is usually pretty
useless, for the reasons you outlined. This approach works much better
with real people -- trolls, for example.

For real spam, it's generally better to filter on other characteristics
of the message. For example, I have a filter that trashes messages with
three consecutive exclamation points in the subject. I have another that
trashes messages whose body contains the four-word sequence "nigerian"
followed by "national" followed by "petroleum" followed by "corporation"
(I'm putting it this way to defeat filters). And so forth.

So in this case, a key phrase chosen from the body would have been a
good choice.

I offer the above advice as a person who routinely processes over 500
emails per day. The only way I can cope is with effective filters.

--
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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