Comments on: The First Spam Email http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2007/02/the-first-spam-email.html Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:12:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Tom http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2007/02/the-first-spam-email.html/comment-page-1#comment-4252 Tom Tue, 06 Feb 2007 02:20:54 +0000 http://www.feld.com/wp/?p=1482#comment-4252 Apparently there is a new documentary about spam appropriately titled "Spam". There is some canadian press coverage at <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/blog/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/blog/index.html</a> Apparently there is a new documentary about spam appropriately titled “Spam”. There is some canadian press coverage at http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/blog/index.html

]]> By: jim Pollock http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2007/02/the-first-spam-email.html/comment-page-1#comment-4251 jim Pollock Sat, 03 Feb 2007 02:32:23 +0000 http://www.feld.com/wp/?p=1482#comment-4251 I am going to deep breath here, write this response, then wait 5 minutes before sending... to make sure I don't go into my uncontrolled rant on spam... What absolutely amazes me is the consistancy in the number of spams that end up in my spam-bucket each day. Over the last 6 to 8 months, it has grown over 100%. But on a day-to-day basis it is within +- 3 or 4 of the same number. Which sort of tells me that as the big ISP boys, comcast, aol, etc etc crank up and stop more and more, the Spam-guys perfectly match the exact same pace. And the spammers have very predictable flows on a day to day basis. Meanwhile, I have become a spammer myself... adopting their tricks and techniques just to freakin' announce a bike ride to 15 buddies without getting myself blackballed off AOL for two weeks. Okay. I'm calm again. Pulse rate, back in 60's. I can hit the POST button now. Jim I am going to deep breath here, write this response, then wait 5 minutes before sending… to make sure I don’t go into my uncontrolled rant on spam…

What absolutely amazes me is the consistancy in the number of spams that end up in my spam-bucket each day. Over the last 6 to 8 months, it has grown over 100%. But on a day-to-day basis it is within +- 3 or 4 of the same number. Which sort of tells me that as the big ISP boys, comcast, aol, etc etc crank up and stop more and more, the Spam-guys perfectly match the exact same pace. And the spammers have very predictable flows on a day to day basis.

Meanwhile, I have become a spammer myself… adopting their tricks and techniques just to freakin’ announce a bike ride to 15 buddies without getting myself blackballed off AOL for two weeks.

Okay. I’m calm again. Pulse rate, back in 60′s. I can hit the POST button now.

Jim

]]> By: Brad Feld http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2007/02/the-first-spam-email.html/comment-page-1#comment-4250 Brad Feld Sat, 03 Feb 2007 01:08:36 +0000 http://www.feld.com/wp/?p=1482#comment-4250 Re: false positives - virtually none. I agree that there is a wide variety of "false positive" issues with spam filters (that's part of what Return Path helps with!) but Postini has tuned their engine to the point where they are processing over 1 billion messages a day and have a trivial number of false positives (at least in my experience.) Re: false positives – virtually none. I agree that there is a wide variety of “false positive” issues with spam filters (that’s part of what Return Path helps with!) but Postini has tuned their engine to the point where they are processing over 1 billion messages a day and have a trivial number of false positives (at least in my experience.)

]]> By: Bosko http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2007/02/the-first-spam-email.html/comment-page-1#comment-4249 Bosko Sat, 03 Feb 2007 01:06:12 +0000 http://www.feld.com/wp/?p=1482#comment-4249 But how many false positives do you get? Have you checked? That's my beef with Email anti-spam. The way I deal with spam is as follows: my Gmail account is all-purpose, but I specifically filter out the Email *I* want and label it explicitly (with Gmail labels). The fact that Gmail allows for youraccount+sometags@gmail.com also helps in identifying specific-purpose Email (for instance certain purposes get their own tags, matched up to a label). Since Gmail, I've been thinking of Email as a "pull what I want when I want" operation, rather than a "filter stuff" operation. Don't get me wrong, some spam still trickles through and for that I use Gmail's "Mark as Spam" -- they haven't been really good at learning though, in my experience (so far) -- but the stuff that gets through only gets through to my most general ("liberal") label, and it's relatively easy to deal with. But how many false positives do you get? Have you checked?

That’s my beef with Email anti-spam.

The way I deal with spam is as follows: my Gmail account is all-purpose, but I specifically filter out the Email *I* want and label it explicitly (with Gmail labels). The fact that Gmail allows for youraccount+sometags@gmail.com also helps in identifying specific-purpose Email (for instance certain purposes get their own tags, matched up to a label). Since Gmail, I’ve been thinking of Email as a “pull what I want when I want” operation, rather than a “filter stuff” operation.

Don’t get me wrong, some spam still trickles through and for that I use Gmail’s “Mark as Spam” — they haven’t been really good at learning though, in my experience (so far) — but the stuff that gets through only gets through to my most general (“liberal”) label, and it’s relatively easy to deal with.

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