[lug] Spam question

[steve at badcheese.com]

That's what it is.  It's a "good" email (not containing any "spammy" 
words" in it) that comes from a spammer's address.  Later, when email 
coming from that same address contains real spam, the baysean filter will 
give it a "less spammy" rating and possibly let it through to your inbox. 
The more "good" emails that come in, the more your baysean filter will 
consider that address a friendly address and let spam through.

- Steve

On Wed, 14 Mar 2007, Sean Reifschneider wrote:

> Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 03:51:49 -0600
> From: Sean Reifschneider <jafo at tummy.com>
> Reply-To: "Boulder (Colorado) Linux Users Group -- General Mailing List"
>     <lug at lug.boulder.co.us>
> To: "Boulder (Colorado) Linux Users Group -- General Mailing List"
>     <lug at lug.boulder.co.us>
> Subject: Re: [lug] Spam question
> 
> On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 09:58:44PM -0700, karl horlen wrote:
>> How could this poison a baysian filter (even in
>> theory)?
>
> If you have nonsense text and someone tells their bayesian filter that it's
> spam, it makes the bayesian filter worse.  Because it is not the text that
> is pushing the product or service, it doesn't help the Bayesian filter
> block future mailings.
>
> If you were instead OCRing the GIF attachments that I usually see
> accompanying these messages (or did, before I started blocking all messages
> with GIF attachments), and using that for Bayesian training and checking,
> you'd get much better success because it includes things like:
>
>   Stock ticker symbol: XYZY
>   Target selling price: $69
>
> Sean
>

EMAIL: (h) steve at badcheese.com  WEB: http://badcheese.com/~steve