Re: [Asrg] Spam detection system proposal

[Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>]

> > > What are the differences between a spammer and a legitimate mass
> > > mailer?
> 
> > the percentage of recipients who want to receive the messages.
> > that's all.
> 
> OK, let me rephrase that:
> 
> What are the *detectable* differences between a spammer and a
> legitimate mass mailer, assuming we can't read the minds of the
> recipients?

none that are reliable and can be determined by looking at just the
message.  the only intrinsic difference between a spam and a
"legitimate"  piece of mail is that the recipient doesn't want to
receive the spam.

okay, there are a fair number of clues that give a good indication that
a message is probably spam - e.g. if the sender seems to be trying to
hide any indication of where the message was sent from.  but now
that filters exist to recognize these, spammers will soon learn not to
generate messages that do that, so looking at them is only a short
term fix.

it used to be that checking for an invalid From address (via SMTP)
was an almost foolproof way to detect spam.  that doesn't work any
longer.  spammers do learn.

Keith
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