From: Gordon J. Holtslander (holtsg@duke.usask.ca)
Date: 05/08/03-05:20:07 PM Z
Hi:
Be warned.
The various spam filtering sevices are currently blocking at least 3
people subscibed to this list. They have blocked other users in the past.
The filtering services blocking the list are spamhaus, bl.spamcop.net and
one unnamed service.
These are blacklisting services. They work from a list of sites
"suspected" of sending spam. The blacklists are created in a way that
does not confirm whether or not a site is actually sending out spam. The
server that runs this list has been added to the list of spam generating
sites by the above services.
The blacklisting anti-spam services work by blocking email from any server
on the blacklist. They don't bother checking the contents of the email
message to see if it is junk.
I have no way of getting the alt-photo-list off these blacklists.
What often happens with these blacklist services is that valid email is
blocked.
Be warned if your ISP uses a blacklisting service all your spam will
dissappear -but some of your valid email will disappear as well.
I don't like spam - but I don't think the blacklisting services are an
effective solution - unless you're happy with some of your valid email
being tossed away without your knowledge.
I think a much better spam filtering tool are the ones the use a Bayesian
analysis of your email. Bayesian analysis is a statistical analysis of
pairs of keywords typical of spam messages. These examine each email
message to see if it looks like spam, based on the frequency of spam
keyword pairs.
Email susppectd of being spam is flagged as spam and/or filtered and set
aside from non-spam email. The end user decides whether or not to delete
junk.
These programs usually allow the end user to define what they consider
spam.
A program like spamprobe supports this.
http://spamprobe.sourceforge.net/ - although this is oriented towards
ISP's rather then end users.
The latest version of mozilla's (versions 1.4a or 1.4b - released
yesterday) emial program has a Bayesian spam filter built into it that
works very well. It will flag all the messages its filter considers junk
and has an option to delete all the spam (called junk mail) at once. Can
also fine tune it so that it will learn what you consider spam and not
spam. Mozilla works on Mac, Windows & linux/unix.
I've installed this for a number of people - they have been happy with it.
Available from http://www.mozilla.org/releases/
Gord
List Manager
On Thu, 8 May 2003, Marcie Greer wrote:
> I am hearing this on another list as well and I have also noticed an
> increase in spam over the past few weeks. Verizon has anti-spam software
> and my email is a sub account that never got spammed until recently, so
> I am wondering if the spammers haven't got a new screwdriver to pry our
> addresses out of the net?
>
> Marcie
>
>
---------------------------------------------------------
Gordon J. Holtslander Dept. of Biology
holtsg@duke.usask.ca 112 Science Place
http://duke.usask.ca/~holtsg University of Saskatchewan
Tel (306) 966-4433 Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Fax (306) 966-4461 Canada S7N 5E2
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