Collaborative spam elimination - would this idea work?

Duncan Edwards Jones

The idea is to have a place where you send on any spam you recieve. The server then logs in to all the mail systems that are registered with it and deletes any mails it finds that closely match that spam. Other users send in their spam and it is checked and removed from your inbox. Then honeypot email addresses are set up that just forward on emails to the spam removal system. These are put in places where the spam meisters will pick them up and add them to their lists. When a bulk mailing is sent out it will go to one of these addresses and be processed and not trouble us at all. Any thoughts or anything obvious I have missed? '--8<------------------------ Ex Datis: Duncan Jones Merrion Computing Ltd

Taka Muraoka

Spam already comprises a large percentage of internet traffic. Why generate more? :-) I've always wondered if Hotmail, for example, does something like this. If I block a certain address, I'm basically saying that that address is putting out spam. So, if enough people block it, does Hotmail then decide that the address is definitively a spamming one? It should...

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Duncan Edwards Jones

As this would remove the spam before it was read no benefit could be derived from sending out spam so it would die out - wouldn't it? '--8<------------------------ Ex Datis: Duncan Jones Merrion Computing Ltd

Uwe Keim

www.spamnet.com does this. They had their service for free during beta stage and now charge 2$ per month. In fact they attracted many volunteers by claiming their service is free FOREVER, thus making many people angry when they started to charge. -- - Free Windows-based CMS: www.zeta-software.de/enu/producer/freeware/download.html - See me: www.magerquark.de

Rupreck

The 1st part of this is more efficiently done with Spamnet - an addon for Outlook (http://www.cloudmark.com/products/spamnet/) - quite a phenomenal tool and removes 99% of my spam. Was disappointed when I discovered it having half built something that did the same. As for polluting their lists this is a good idea but already now spammers change the same email quite a lot and so the added value for removal may not be great enough over that of just the Spamnet approach. Spamnet works from as a business because as membership grows the power of the system increases and also frustrated users feel they are fighting back.

Rocky Moore

Yeah, that is like MailWasher. Have been using for a while now and have a list of blacklisted sites. Now they are charging for it and only provide it free for use with one e-mail account and it cannot be a hotmail account. Oh well.. Guess they did not get enough work from their ad in the software for the last year! I don't mind paying for software, but when it is offered free and then later changes, I would have rather known that at the start! Rocky Moore <><

Tomaz Stih 0

I think the solution would be to digitally sign every e-mail. Certificate agencies would verify digital signatures and each person sending an email to this new email system would have one. CAs would in their policy ban spam. The rest would be dealt with by the market and local laws. Tomaz

Neville Franks

If every person on the planet used Bayesian filtering such as SpamBayes, Spam would die. http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/[^] Best thing since sliced bread and getting rid of spam. Neville Franks, Author of ED for Windows. Free Trial at www.getsoft.com

Heath Stewart

No, it does not work that way. Hotmail uses a rudimentary analysis method using keywords and known offenders. What this orig. poster was speaking of is similar to Bayesian filtering that is already prevalent in many plug-ins and email readers today. This would just add a "global" twist to it, which some commercial email systems boast (or for which plug-ins are made, like for Exchange server). For Bayesian filtering, you have to buy at least the basic MSN monthly package (software only). Their servers supposedly deploy Bayesian filtering, at least based on speculation (since I will not pay for email that was originally supposed to be free - before the over-commercialization and regulation of the Internet) and evidence at Microsoft's research labs on Bayesian principals. Oddly enough, Bayesian networks got their start back in the 1600's or 1700's (can't remember). We're just now making them work for us and they work good. For a personal plug-in to Outlook, look-up information on SpamBayes. It's a very good plug-in that works well and is written by the supposed "world's best Python programmer".

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Mike Dimmick

Yes, it'll work. And it does: http://www.cloudmark.com[^]. I'm not sure if there are any honeypots, but you could probably set one up.